Django Unchained 720p Kickass Torrent
Geraldine Ferraiz
Excellent read on a movie worth taking a closer look at. I think QT's greatest trick here is how he deftly has his cake and eats it too. Whereas most movies that create conflict out of racial inequality deliver a solution with kids gloves (making it all the result of one side's efforts or the other's), QT cleverly makes the actions of Blacks and Whites equally important. Django and Shultz are mirrors of Stevens and Candy, and the two former each killing a vile and twisted reflection of their own race underscores QT's thoughts on how slavery ended. Schultz kills Candy out of frustration over how his verbal flexibilty and more enlightened views become meaningless in this part of the world. Slavery was entrenched in the south, and law wouldn't make a difference. What would, is violence. In the same vein, Django killing Stevens is a powerful moment, because we're seeing a man violently act out against his self-serving doppleganger, putting himself and his goal (Broomhilda, and freedom in general) at risk by choosing action. The two arcs incapsulate the developing willingness of Blacks and Whites to end slavery by force, and the film's hyper-violence plays like an appetizer for the Civil War.
QT loads the film with references to slavery throughout history. The Cleopatra Club brings to mind ancient Jews, the Mandingo fights in the Caesar room recall Roman gladiator combat, and as you mentioned, Stevens description of the mining company is very similar to 20th century prisons. Of the first two, either God or time/law lead to the eventual end of slavery in (biblical) egypt and much of Europe. In America though, the solution had to be violence, and the unsettling thing about the movie is how boldly it presents guns as the great equalizing factor in American history.
Also, great point about Lee. The idea of one man being the sole authority of an entire group of filmmakers and people is incredibly insulting.
Sam, thanks for your response, and for pointing out the references to slavery that went unnoticed by me. I also like your take on the doppelganger aspects of Stephen/Django and Candie/Schultz.
QT constantly shows how much slavery was part of regular society. He parodies it in the eye-holes in the hoods sequence, which is a misunderstood piece of comic joy, but in so many scenes he focuses on how "polite society" included the debasement and ownership of human beings. Schultz is eventually so disgusted by "society" he gets himself killed.
Django has no observable, nor symbolic powers.
Except that he's a phenomenal rider. He isn't just a Black Man in a Cadillac--he's better than anyone else in the movie at one of the things that really mattered back when. (As you pointed out, plenty of that rodeo stuff was not invented by nice white Marlboro Men.) Jamie Foxx is not getting enough credit for being amazing on horseback.
Sam, your point about the Civil War references jibes well with the opening credit "...two years before the Civil War." None of QT's graphics are superfluous. That one reverberates against everything that follows, as a kind of low drumbeat to war. And your comments about history make me see that ridiculously distracting sculpture of two wrestlers behind Candie's dinner table in a different light. I took it as a cheap but funny jab at Candie's pretensions, and his extreme "curiosity" about male grapplers.
Now it ties into your and Odie's notion that this movie is asking, What does "civilized" really mean if it doesn't include decency and compassion?
Odie: "...in so many scenes he focuses on how "polite society" included the debasement and ownership of human beings. Schultz is eventually so disgusted by "society" he gets himself killed."
-which relates to any era, but most sharply the times we live in, where a lot of Americans can live pretty comfortably with illegal wars, environmental abuses, suppression of gay rights, erosion of basic freedoms, etc. so long as political protocol is observed and their own comfort zones remain intact.
In that sense, I figure slavery is not DJANGO's main business, no more than Nazism was BASTERDS's. Both films might have a more practical aim of getting folks in "civilized" countries to think about their passive or active role in the history happening around them. There are sooo many closeups of ancillary characters standing by silently, haunted, guilty, terrified, while the men of violence or cunning (or both) do the deciding.
In QT's last two films, I sense an aging, wealthy fanboy waking up to the world and deciding to say something about it. There's something beautiful about that.
Thanks for the great conversation. I'm white, and saw DU with a racially mixed crowd in Dallas, not far from Jamie Foxx's home turf, and my sense from the audience was a weird euphoria at seeing this usually-avoided topic taken head on.
But thinking back on it, I also felt like QT was serving up a fantasy that gives us all an historical out. It's better than Hollywood's usual silence on the issue (remember the scene in "Unforgiven" when the white characters struggle to ID Morgan Freeman but fail to mention that he's black, the ONLY thing that would've mattered in the day?). But the sad truth is that we (I'm talking about white folks) have barely started to come to terms with the reign of racial terror that everyone lived under in the Antebellum South. When I was researching this piece ( -times) on a wave of lynchings in Texas in 1860, I was surprised at how much paranoid "slave tampering" laws ruled the land by then. Freed blacks were simply illegal in Texas by then. Nor were whites supposed to talk with another man's slaves. In 1858, a "foreign" European riding about with an armed black man would not have been tolerated in a South on edge about riots in Kansas and incredibly insecure about the future of slavery. The Peculiar Institution was both "normal" part of the economy, but it was a normal supported by systemic violence even worse than the grotesquery QT makes of it. I don't begrudge him his M.O.--I just agree with you in hoping it's not the last word.
I'm really curious to see where the film adaptation of "Twelve Years a Slave" takes Hollywood's new abolitionism next. From this interview with Paul Giametti, it sounds encouraging:
ttp://collider.com/paul-giamatti-twelve-years-a-slave-interview/208828/
Excellent reviews! You both touched on points I didn't even consider.
I think what sets Django Unchained apart from most Hollywood movies that deal with an ugly chapter of history is that the hero isn't a sympathetic member of the oppressive class (Shindler's List, Linclon..). Django is the hero.
Schultz might have taken the chains off, but in the end it was Django on his own. Schultz even admits that he's exploiting Django for his own needs. Jamie Foxx does a great job using subtle body language around Shultz. He's agreed to be Schultz's partner, and even grows to like the man, but he keeps his distance. He doesn't trust him 100%. He knows he's on his own.
Tarantino deserves a little more credit than just making an ode to spaghetti westerns. I think he dealt with racism in America more honestly than most mainstream movie makers would dare to. In Lincoln, what happens after slavery is abolished? White men cheer and the movie is over. They don't mention that Black people are still in hell. With Django, his freedom is just the beginning, and it's more like 'out of the frying pan into the fire'.
Thank you for this post. I loved and hated this movie. Loved because I'm glad people bought tickets and are at least slightly forced to face their hidden racism. (although a couple of people did walk out of the theater when Django was hung upside down) And hated because it was so violent. Almost to the point of ludicrous and laughabilty (as I realize it's supposed to be) but in light of recent history (kind of like watching the opening Stock Market scene in Dark Knight Rises so soon after the Colorado murders.)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned(maybe I missed it?) how Inglorious Basterds and Django are fairy tales? Django is a natural at shooting, he chooses the silk blue outfit, he saves his princess etc.. I wonder how that idea meshes with how people are saying it's such a powerful telling of facing what slaver was like. Is a fairy tale the only way we can "handle" viewing my white ancestors committing such atrocities? People don't really sugar coat the WW2 Holocaust but they do when it comes to slavery? I just don't get it. Maybe that's another reason I'm unsure about actually "liking" this film. Anyway, that's my 2 cents as far as I can type it. I'd never heard of this blog until today but I did read the piece that Boone wrote on another site recently. Glad I found this blog. You've got another follower.
Hey, how could I not read this? I wrote my own review on this movie and I'm glad you liked it as much as I did. I was almost hoping that QT might take on Asians in America (cheap labor and lynchings in the West). Schultz doesn't tell the full story of Brunnhilde of The Ring Cycle as related to Broomhilda von Shaft. That would seem an effort to spare Django and give him a happy ending. One could suggest that QT is foreshadowing the total destruction of Candyland and the plantation way of life. Because it was the reunion of Siegfried and Brunnhilde (in death) that signaled the end of Valhalla and the gods.
I really enjoyed this post. Thank you. I spent the first day or two after seeing Django unable to decide if I liked it or not because I found it so disturbing. With Inglourious Basterds, the good guys -- us -- fought the bad guys -- them -- seeking revenge on behalf of a population. In Django, on the other hand, the good guy was involved in a very personal fight against, well, us. OK, not you and not me personally, or my ancestors for that matter, but I found the movie relentless and brutal. I was like King Schulz, turning green while the runaway slave was ripped apart by dogs. Knowing the shameful history is one thing, watching it on the screen (however fictionalized) was harsh.
As an aside, my 15 year old daughter read your post to me while I drove. I had to explain who Spike Lee and Chuck D are. (Embarrassing. She knows perfectly well who Public Enemy is.) This led to a general discussion about race in America in the 80s and 90s. So your post was thought-provoking on many levels.