Saturday, March 23, 2013

Quentin Unleashed

Known for his own brand of unapologetic grotesque and witty action thrillers, Quentin Tarantino returns with the much awaited Django Unchained. For his fans, the film has everything that they expected from it and a little more. With his signature on every single character, event, dialogue and gunshot in the film, it is perhaps the most refined Tarantino masterpiece. The film's tagline reads, 'They took his freedom, he is taking everything', and from an Indian point of view, it simply translates as Tarantino's cinematic version of 'Keh Ke Loonga'.





Django, a slave with a brutal history of torture is sought by bounty hunter Dr King Schultz for an assignment to kill the Brittle brothers. However, they develop an understanding and decide to become partners in crime, as it were, to make some more money. But, Django is focused on one ultimate goal - to find and rescue his wife Broomhilda. Tarantino combines the western genre and puts in a very stylised sophisticated manner in this extravagant tale of violent retribution.



Violence and retaliation are recurring themes in most of his films; nevertheless, there is an element in Django that supersedes vengeance. In a scene where Django asks Schultz why he is going out of his way to help him, Schultz replies, "I have never given anybody their freedom before. And now that I have, I feel responsible for you." That element of emotion and personal interaction are what take the film to a new level. We are used to seeing characters in Tarantino's films who are almost comic book-like with one cardinal trait, but here, you see these albeit quirky characters as people too.



Music plays a very important role in providing many memorable moments in the director's previous works - be it Nancy Sinatra's Bang Bang in the opening credits of Kill Bill Vol 1 or Girl, you'll be a woman soon at John Travolta and Uma Thurman's unconventional date in Pulp Fiction. In Django Unchained, the soundtrack adds to the pre-existent charm. Country music dominates the first half of the film and before you know it; modern hip-hop takes over as the characters wreak havoc with all guns blazing in the climax.



Playing a character with a similar poise as General Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds, Christoph Waltz's Dr King Schultz is the most adorable character in the movie. Django, played by Jamie Foxx, is also impressive; but if visual yearning serves right, that was a role tailor-made for a young Samuel L Jackson. Jackson is seen in this film in a negative role of Stephen, a loyal and conservative slave at the house of Monsieur Calvin Candie.



Candie, played by Leonardo Di Caprio is the powerful slave trader who owns Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). His growth from being a naive, torturous rich man to a no-nonsense ego maniac is commendable. Tarantino himself plays yet another cameo in a semi-vital scene towards the climax.
 

Looking at his filmography, it would be unfair to call Django Unchained as Tarantino's best work, because that would undermine his other best works. Having carved a niche and created a cult that follows his kind of cinema which is not at all suited for the faint-hearted, his film underlines one fact about the world - it is bloody, brutal and violent; so you might as well enjoy its grotesqueness.


Rating: 4 out of 5


Published in DNA After Hrs (Pune) on March 23, 2013

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