Literary critic Henry Anthony
Tarantino‘s Django Unchained is a revived classic adaptation of a vigilante tale with an underground hero.
[In this epic 165mins feature Django’s euphoric quest and steady rise to reclaim property of ownership symbolically reflects the universal universal restoration buried in every undiscovered injustice.]
Django, Jamie Foxx becomes a free-slave who acts as an accomplice with German bounty hunter, Christoph Waltz in tracking down the former’s wife who is yet still held captive on a notorious plantation field, ‘Candyland.’
Tarantino masterfully intertwines mixed emotions, controlling the racial politic tension through humour, romance, friendship, revenge, love and adventure, in short creating refined characters and perhaps, a well accomplished masterpiece.
”Will Smith rejected Django Unchained role because it wasn’t big enough…” Quentin Tarantino first offered the part played by Jamie Foxx to Smith, but the actor felt the role played by Christoph Waltz was the real lead.
Scene from Django. Photo courtesy geektyrant.com
Christoph Waltz indeed was a revelation once again in his character choice, depicting another ingenious performance, scooping his second Oscar with former collaborator Tarantino, after featuring in his previous film, ‘Inglorious Basterds.’
In Django Unchained, Waltz combines the perfect cocktail for a classic cinematic villain whose violence horridly startles you, yet through charisma and wit, hopelessly leaves you swoon falling in love with his destructive apologetic nature.
Hollywood Bad Boy Will Smith Went on to say
He simply felt the part of dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr King Schultz was the real lead. “Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead,” Smith told Entertainment Weekly.” The other character was the lead! I was like, ‘No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!'”
Although Christoph Waltz picked up an Oscar, ironically it was in the category for ”Best Supporting Actor.”
Arguably, Waltz can be seen as the lead in the film in terms of his dominating performance and no doubt, Tarantino’s script.
[A similar connection can be found with Shakespeare’s ‘Othello,’ being the subject of the story yet arguably, a further much discussed concept in the play of course, is ‘Iago.’]
This lack of ‘a voice’ or ‘backbone’ for these ethnic men universally suggests a time of great suppression in recognition even when status or identity had been garnished in their favour, irrespective of the platform, the subject somehow slid out of focus and was engineered by the white man.
However, Waltz and Foxx on screen seem to appear quite as a duo creating a timeless tale of honor and friendship.
Hollywood Inside Man Spike Lee Tweets
”American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.’
Samuel L. Jackson‘s character, intriguingly peculiar and undeniably significant to the racial political tension of the times. Jackson plays the right hand man to Leonardo DiCaprio‘s sinister character, Calvin Candie [who owns ‘Candyland,’ the third wealthiest plantation for the working slaves.]
Dr King Schultz. Photo courtesy szenebilder.szbn.de –
Jackson’s role in the film as a black man who has a profound legal bond to Mr Candie raises numerous questions on various emotional levels. When Django arrives, the network of racial engagement in the master’s house becomes politically spectacular as Waltz and Foxx, DiCaprio and Jackson begin dissecting their differences; honor and deceit becoming multi-layered in an evocative manner which intelligently provokes the audience’s perspective on subservience and morality.
Additionally, Dicaprio’s sinister character heightens the crescendo, rendering the audience to a very fulfulling ‘semi-climax’.
A vocal anti-Django Spike Lee. Photo courtesy www.filmindustrynetwork.biz
Jamie Foxx’s response to Spike Lee’s tweet follows
”But you can’t tell me that Eminem ain’t hot ‘cos he’s white or that Elvis Presley isn’t a bad mother******, or that Quentin Tarantino can’t do whatever he likes, ‘cos damn straight he can.”
Foxx going further calling Spike Lee ‘shady‘ and ‘irresponsible‘ as the tweet comments went public without the director having viewed Tarantino’s heated political western.
Tarantino makes it apparent in his latest flick such delicate matters can have exploration from another origin in the driver’s seat, with his moody subtext of interwoven characters, we see a raw portrayal of racial chaos in a sumptuous modern tale.
Foxx riding, the final scenes are violently orgasmic, yet quite Hollywood, however, prior to the much labored through line of racial injustice, his succession definitively securing the film as a modern classic, stretching towards a masterpiece.
