Tarantino has written his own legend with Django Unchained !
Why do people who are against a man’s color, language, ethnic and cultural values believe that they are superior to others and have the right to dominate them? Does apartheid justify discrimination, othering, creating difference among races and violence leading to slavery of man?
Within the scope of these questions,Tarantino takes the viewers to a magnificient cinematographic journey with his chain of events advancing on a single lane. He tells a story in 1858 in Texas before the American Civil War while writing about the friendly relationship between a German headhunter and a slave whom he granted freedom. On the other hand, he presents the audience the struggle of regaining the control of a slave over his life. Of course, he does this using violence as if he slaps the viewer on the face as usual.
The viewers had left Tarantino as Adolf Hitler was being burned to death in a cinema theater in the movie Inglourious Basterds (2009) during the conquer of Paris by the Germans.
This time Tarantino takes his viewers to the past again to unchain a black slave Django with the help of a headhunter Dr. King Schultz on the lands of slavery.
What Tarantino and Django underlined in the movie is
Self-respect for identity and courage!
Defending and sublimation of self-respect is the only precondition of societal identity. Freedom and individualism will never be achieved without these pillars. However, a blindfold obedience prevails in America of that period; minds are gyved in the interest of the powerful and oppressor.Therefore the movie emphasizes that for an oppressed society collective freedom gains meaning in minds first. In fact, Django shoots his own race, too, while getting rid of slave owners and traders. He emphasizes that the system can change with the realization of “identity building”.
With Django, Tarantino updates his own kind being faithful to his type of movies. Unchanging Django, Tarantino passes to War Movies genre with Inglorious Bastards in the West. Yet going beyond his style, produces a special taste on his final emphasis. The good and tha bad come face to face under his provocative phantasy with the vision of World War II. As it were, he is directed by a strong desire of taking revenge of victims and punishing assailants.
Django finds revengeful energy with justice of the west unchaining himself; becomes more decided, rude, and effective. In spite of violence elements in his movies, Tarantino presents his viewers classical beauty sincerely.
His viewers couldn’t have seen that Django and Dr. King Schultz were attached to each other respectfully if the movie didn’t have funny and satirical elements. Dr. King, sometimes depicted as a funny head hunter, reflects the general atmosphere of the movie with his humorous character.
In the movie, the story of racism as enured into the society in general, institutionalized and rationalized is told. Namely, people whipping the black and enjoying it, the blacks being given to dogs as food, and Ku Klux Klan are pictured. Tarantino, at the same time, caricaturizes these characters in the movie. Although these characters are seen by viewers as quite ordinary, racism isn’t depicted as sympathetic. As the masked white men – KKK - run accompanied by an epic music, Tarantino takes the audience to five minutes earlier and we laugh at funny dialogs of the masked white men. They are still racist.
The performance of Christoph Walts is extraordinary as in Inglorious Bastards ; he keeps the comic elements balanced successfully without stepping on the movie. Dr. King Shultz is a complicated character who is talented with his detailed and funny dialogs, a capitalist racing for dollars, both pragmatic and idealist,and cultured with humanist values.
As a character coming from Europe, Dr. King Schultz is ready to confront with violence of America. He grants Django his freedom because only Dijango can help Dr. Schultz in order to find three slave traders dead or alive.
Waltz accepts the agreement quickly offered to Cristoph Waltz by Django in the name of “honor and freedom”. Django’s purpose, however, is to save his wife, a slave of Calvin Candie’s, who has a soft charisma and is a narcist enemy of the black.
Calvin Candie’s speaking with a skull on “genetics of black slavery” is unforgettable! Although these claims of the then scientists’ are forty years ahead of the movie, this detail is not of great importance. The viewer gets the message after all.
It is impossible not to realize that Dr. King Schults, in fact, is the very Tarantino himself in many respects. The gifted businessman produces backfire movies with usual American action movies using amateur violence scenes and abundance of dialogs. As a matter of fact, Tarantino is “fond of justice”, too.
In the movie, Tarantino does not forget the first Django movie directed by Sergio Corbucci. He is kind enough assigning Franco Nero, the leading character in the first movie, a role thereby paying tribute to the original movie.
Tarantino uses a lot of violence in his movies with his character of the defender of the oppressed, nevertheless he manages to make the viewer smile in his movies. Tarantino is sort of attached to the movie Django Unchained passionately, and the viewer feels it.
Calvin Candie’s words pound up the minds as he was telling about his father’s being shaved by a slave with an open razor for 50 years: “I would cut my master’s throat if I were in a position of shaving him”. In fact, what summarizes the movie is that such a slave never ever thinks of slaughtering his master.
The Black being torn to pieces by dogs swim before Dr. King Schults’ eyes as he is listening to Beethoven, and suddenly, he shouts at the woman who is playing the Harp, “Stop playing Beethoven for God’s sake!” In this sequence, Tarantino makes a reference to A Clockwork Orange.
By using the music effectively, Tarantino makes impressive choices in creating the atmosphere of the movie and lap dissolving despite the fact that there are some who think that cinema and music is a bad marriage. Like the Freedom Song... Django finds the three guilty white brothers, and plays the Freedom Song of Anthony Hamilton and Eleyna Boyton as he remembers his past; in the meantime Django and his wife try to espace to freedom.
There is a tragic element deep in Django’s character. Django has a temperate and simple stance. At the same time, what makes him a real hero is his being a revengeful and target driven man looking for the woman he loves.
A director’s not keeping indifferent to cruelty to humanity, massacre, apartheid, discrimination, and situations such as violence, and fretting over and turning them into screenplay is a choice. This choice is for the expression of hatred and disgust in the face of an irresistable and untenable fact. The movie is a human, and a novel over there. It is likely that Tarantino movie is present over there with its unpublished humanity aspect.
The generic of the movie should be viewed till the end on the screen because there is a little surprise for the viewer at the final moment.