Django Unchained

Django Unchained Information

Django Unchained is a 2012 American action western drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson. The film was released on December 25, 2012 in North America.

Set in the antebellum era of the Deep South and Old West, the film follows a freed slave (Foxx) who treks across the United States with a bounty hunter (Waltz) on a mission to rescue his wife (Washington) from a cruel plantation owner (DiCaprio).

The film received very positive reviews and was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture. At the 85th Academy Awards, Christoph Waltz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, after already having won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor; and Quentin Tarantino won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, his second Oscar since his first for 1994's Pulp Fiction, after having won the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film was commercially successful, grossing over $407 million in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film to date.

Plot

In 1858, several male slaves are chained and being transported after being purchased by the Speck Brothers, Ace and Dicky. Among the slaves is Django, who has been sold away from his wife, Broomhilda. The Speck brothers encounter Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist and, unbeknownst to them, a bounty hunter. Schultz kills Ace after he points a shotgun at Schultz, and shoots Dicky's horse, crushing his leg under it. Schultz then asks Django if he knows the Brittle Brothers and when he finds out that he does and can identify them, Schultz offers Django his freedom and $75 in exchange for helping him track them down. They leave Dicky to be executed by the slaves as they depart. After they hunt down and kill the Brittle brothers, Schultz partners with Django in bounty hunting until spring, at which time he will assist Django in tracking down and rescuing Broomhilda. Over the winter, Schultz trains Django in bounty hunting and mastering a sidearm.

Django collects his first bounty, a member of a man named Smitty Bacall's gang, and keeps the handbill. After collecting a number of bounties over the winter, Schultz and Django confirm that Broomhilda's current owner is Calvin Candie, the charming but brutal owner of the Candyland plantation in Mississippi, who forces his slaves to fight to the death in "Mandingo fights". Schultz expects that Candie will demand an exorbitant price for Broomhilda if they are forthright with their intentions, so they devise a ruse whereby they will pretend to seek the purchase of one of Candie's prize fighters for a hefty sum, meanwhile purchase Broomhilda on-the-side for a more reasonable sum, then disappear before they finalize the bogus deal. Schultz and Django meet Candie at a club in Greenville and offer to buy one of his fighters for $12,000. His greed tickled, Candie invites them to his plantation. On the road, Schultz and Django witness Candie murder one of his Mandingo fighters, who fled due to not wanting to fight any more, by having him torn apart by dogs. At the plantation, Schultz secretly informs Broomhilda of the plot. At dinner, Schultz expresses an incidental interest in Broomhilda because she speaks German, and offers $300 for her.

Django raises the suspicions of Candie's staunchly loyal senior house slave, Stephen, who correctly deduces that Django and Broomhilda know each other and that the sale of the Mandingo fighter is a ruse, and informs Candie in private. This enrages Candie, who, armed with this information, demands the $12,000 for Broomhilda instead, or he will kill her. Schultz agrees to buy her at this price in order to save her life. After the money is paid and the paperwork signed, Candie demands to shake hands with Schultz to finalize the deal, or Broomhilda will be shot. Schultz, in disgust, shoots and kills Candie point-blank with a concealed Derringer gun. Schultz is shot dead too, and a gun fight erupts. Django shoots many of Candie's henchmen but has to surrender when Stephen threatens to have Broomhilda killed.

As punishment, Stephen and Candie's sister Lara agree to send Django to a mine to be worked to death. Broomhilda, instead of being given her freedom, is locked in a cabin. En route to the mine, Django convinces the slave drivers that he is a bounty hunter, shows them the handbill from his first kill as evidence, and falsely informs them that there is a high-end bounty on some outlaws who have taken refuge back at Candie's plantation. He offers them a cut of the bounty if they free him and ride with him. The moment they free him, he kills the slave drivers, takes their dynamite, and rides back to Candyland.

Returning to the plantation, Django discovers Schultz's body. He takes the certificate of freedom that Candie signed for Broomhilda and reunites with her after freeing her from where she was being held. When Candie's mourners return to the Candyland mansion from his funeral, Django reveals himself. He sends off the remaining slaves and in a final shoot-out kills everyone inside except Stephen, whom he shoots in the knees. Having set the dynamite inside the house, he lights the fuse and leaves. Django and Broomhilda watch from a distance as the house explodes, killing Stephen, and ride away.

Cast

Jamie Foxx as Django Freeman
Christoph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz
Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin J. Candie
Kerry Washington as Broomhilda Von Shaft
Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen
Don Johnson as Spencer 'Big Daddy' Bennett
Walton Goggins as Billy Crash
Dennis Christopher as Leonide Moguy
James Remar as Butch Pooch / Ace Speck
David Steen as Mr. Stonecipher
Dana Michelle Gourrier as Cora
Nichole Galicia as Sheba
Laura Cayouette as Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly
Ato Essandoh as D'Artagnan
Sammi Rotibi as Rodney
Clay Donahue as Fontenot
Escalante Lundy as Big Fred
Miriam F. Glover as Betina
Franco Nero as Amerigo Vessepi

Other roles include James Russo as Dicky Speck, Tom Wopat as U.S. Marshall Gill Tatum, Don Stroud as Sheriff Bill Sharp, Russ Tamblyn as Son of a Gunfighter, Amber Tamblyn as Daughter of a Son of a Gunfighter, Bruce Dern as Old Man Carrucan, M. C. Gainey as Big John Brittle, Cooper Huckabee as Lil Raj Brittle, Doc Duhame as Ellis Brittle, Jonah Hill as Bag Head #2, and Lee Horsley as Sheriff Gus (Snowy Snow). Zoë Bell, Michael Bowen, Robert Carradine, Jake Garber, Ted Neeley, James Parks, and Tom Savini play Candyland trackers, while Michael Parks, John Jarratt, and Quentin Tarantino play The LeQuint Dickey Mining Co. employees.

Production

Development

In 2007, Quentin Tarantino, speaking with The Daily Telegraph, discussed an idea for a form of spaghetti western set in the United States' pre-Civil War Deep South which he called "a southern", stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to." Tarantino later explained the genesis of the idea: "I was writing a book about Sergio Corbucci when I came up with a way to tell the story. One of the things that's fun when you write about subtextual criticism ... you don't have to be right. It doesn't have to be what the director was thinking. It's what you're gathering from it. You're making a case. I was writing about how his movies have this evil Wild West, a horrible Wild West. It was surreal, it dealt a lot with fascism. So I'm writing this whole piece on this, and I'm thinking: 'I don't really know if Sergio was thinking [this] while he was doing this. But I know I'm thinking it now. And I can do it!"

Tarantino finished the script on April 26, 2011, and handed in the final draft to The Weinstein Company. In October 2012, frequent Tarantino collaborator RZA said that he and Tarantino had intended to crossover Django Unchained with RZA's Tarantino-presented martial-arts film The Man with the Iron Fists. The crossover would have seen a younger version of RZA's blacksmith character appear as a slave in an auction. However, scheduling conflicts prevented RZA's participation.

One inspiration for the film is Sergio Corbucci's 1966 spaghetti western Django, whose star Franco Nero has a cameo appearance in Django Unchained. Another inspiration is the 1975 film Mandingo, about a slave trained to fight other slaves. Tarantino included scenes in the snow as an homage to The Great Silence. "Silenzio takes place in the snow. I liked the action in the snow so much, Django Unchained has a big snow section in the middle," Tarantino said in an interview with The Guardian.

Title

The title Django Unchained alludes to the titles of the aforementioned 1966 Corbucci film Django, as well to Hercules Unchained " the American title for the 1959 Italian epic fantasy film Ercole e la regina di Lidia, which deals with the mythical hero's escape from enslavement to a wicked master " and to Angel Unchained " the 1970 American biker film that deals with a biker exacting revenge on a large group of rednecks.

Casting

Among those considered for the title role of Django, Michael K. Williams and Will Smith were mentioned as possibilities, but in the end Jamie Foxx was cast in the role. Franco Nero, the original Django from the 1966 Italian film, was rumored for the role of Calvin Candie, but instead was given a cameo appearance as a minor character. Nero suggested that he play a mysterious horseman who haunts Django in visions, and is revealed in an ending flashback to be Django's father; Tarantino opted not to use the idea. Kevin Costner was in negotiations to join as Ace Woody but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Kurt Russell was cast instead but also later left the role. When Kurt Russell dropped out, the role of Ace Woody was not recast; instead the character was merged with Walton Goggins' character, Billy Crash.

Jonah Hill was offered the role of Scotty Harmony, a gambler who loses Broomhilda to Candie in a poker game, but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts with The Watch. Sacha Baron Cohen was also offered the role, but declined in order to appear in Les Misérables. Neither Scotty nor the poker game appear in the final cut of the film. On June 15, 2012, it was announced that Hill had become available to join the cast, but in a different role. On April 4, 2012, Joseph Gordon-Levitt announced that he would be unable to appear in the film because of a prior commitment to make his directorial debut on Don Jon. Gordon-Levitt explained, "I would have loved, loved to have done it. He's one of my very favorite filmmakers." The film also has cameo appearances of several famous film and TV stars of the past, including Tom Wopat, Bruce Dern, Michael Parks, and Don Johnson.

Costume design

In a January 2013 interview with Vanity Fair, costume designer Sharen Davis said much of the film's wardrobe was inspired by spaghetti westerns and other works of art. For Django's wardrobe, Davis and Tarantino watched the television series Bonanza and referred to it frequently. The pair even hired the hatmaker who designed the hat worn by the show's Little Joe, played by Michael Landon. Davis described Django's look as a "rock-n-roll take on the character". Django's sunglasses were inspired by Charles Bronson's character in The White Buffalo (1977). Davis used Thomas Gainsborough's 1770 oil painting The Blue Boy as a reference for Django's valet outfit.

In the final scene, Broomhilda wears a dress similar to that of Ida Galli's character in Blood for a Silver Dollar (1965). Davis said the idea of Calvin Candie's costume came partly from Rhett Butler, and that Don Johnson's signature Miami Vice look inspired his (Big Daddy's) cream-colored linen suit in the film. King Schultz's faux chinchilla coat was inspired by Telly Savalas in Kojak. Davis also revealed that many of her costume ideas did not make the final cut of the film, leaving some unexplained characters such as Zoë Bell's tracker, who was intended to drop her bandana to reveal an absent jaw.

Filming

Principal photography for Django Unchained started in California in November 2011, in Wyoming in February 2012, and at the National Historic Landmark Evergreen Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, outside of New Orleans, in March 2012. The film was shot in the anamorphic format on 35 mm film. Although originally scripted, a sub-plot centring on Zoë Bell's masked Tracker was cut, and remained unfilmed, due to time constraints. After 130 shooting days, the film wrapped up principal photography in late July 2012.

Editing

Django Unchained was the first Tarantino film not edited by Sally Menke, who died in 2010. Editing duties were instead handled by Fred Raskin, who had worked as an assistant editor in Tarantino's Kill Bill.

Music

See Django Unchained (soundtrack) for more information The film features both original as well as existing music tracks. Tracks composed specifically for the film include "100 Black Coffins" by Rick Ross and produced by and featuring Jamie Foxx, "Who Did That To You?" by John Legend, "Ancora Qui" by Ennio Morricone and Elisa, and "Freedom" by Anthony Hamilton and Elayna Boynton. The theme, "Django", was also the theme song of the 1966 film. Musician Frank Ocean wrote an original song for the film's soundtrack, but it was rejected by Tarantino, who explained that "Ocean wrote a fantastic ballad that was truly lovely and poetic in every way, there just wasn't a scene for it." Frank Ocean later published the song, entitled Wiseman, on his Tumblr blog. The film also features a few famous pieces of western classical music such as Beethoven's Für Elise (which was not yet discovered in 1858) and Dies irae from Verdi's Requiem. Tarantino has stated several times through the years that he avoids using full scores of original music for fear of disliking the composer's work and rejecting it. The film's soundtrack album was released on December 18, 2012.

Distribution

Marketing

The first teaser poster was inspired by a fan-art poster by Italian artist Federico Mancosu. His artwork was published in May 2011, a few days after the synopsis and the official title release. In August 2012, at director Quentin Tarantino's request, the production companies bought the concept artwork from Mancosu to use for promotional purposes as well as on the crew passes and clothing for staff during filming.

Release

Django Unchained was released on December 25, 2012, in the United States by The Weinstein Company and released on January 18, 2013, by Sony Pictures Releasing International in the United Kingdom. The film was screened for the first time at the Directors Guild of America on December 1, 2012, with additional screening events having been held for critics leading up to the film's wide release. The premiere of Django Unchained was canceled following the shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

The film played for an extended run at Los Angeles' New Beverly Cinema, a repertory theater owned by Tarantino.

Home media

The film will be released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital Download on April 16, 2013.

Reception

Critical response

The film has been acclaimed by critics and has garnered a rating of 88% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 231 critical reviews with an average rating of 8 out of 10. The consensus of opinion was: "Bold, bloody, and stylistically daring, Django Unchained is another incendiary masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reports the film with a score of 81, indicating "universal acclaim".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and said: "The film offers one sensational sequence after another, all set around these two intriguing characters who seem opposites but share pragmatic, financial and personal issues." Peter Bradshaw, film critic for The Guardian, awarded the film five stars, writing: "I can only say Django delivers, wholesale, that particular narcotic and delirious pleasure that Tarantino still knows how to confect in the cinema, something to do with the manipulation of surfaces. It's as unwholesome, deplorable and delicious as a forbidden cigarette." Writing in The New York Times, critic A. O. Scott compared Django to Tarantino's earlier Inglourious Basterds: "Like Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness." Parmita Borah, on EF News International, wrote, "Unlike other Tarantino flicks, Django Unchained has a linear narrative, excluding a few flashback scenes." Designating the film a Times 'critics' pick, Scott said Django is "a troubling and important movie about slavery and racism." Filmmaker Michael Moore praised Django, tweeting that the movie "is one of the best film satires ever. A rare American movie on slavery and the origins of our sick racist history."

To the contrary, Owen Gleiberman, film critic for the Entertainment Weekly, wrote that "Django isn't nearly the film that Inglourious was. It's less clever, and it doesn't have enough major characters " or enough of Tarantino's trademark structural ingenuity " to earn its two-hour-and-45-minute running time." In his review for the Indy Week, David Fellerath wrote: "Django Unchained shows signs that Tarantino did little research beyond repeated viewings of Sergio Corbucci's 1966 spaghetti Western Django and a blaxploitation from 1975 called Boss Nigger, written by and starring Fred Williamson." New Yorkers Anthony Lane was "disturbed by their [Tarantino's fans] yelps of triumphant laughter, at the screening I attended, as a white woman was blown away by Django's guns."

Writing on BuzzFeed, author Roxane Gay challenged the premise of Django Unchained as a "black man's slavery revenge fantasy" film by arguing that it is "a white man's slavery revenge fantasy, and one in which white people figure heavily and where black people are, largely, incidental. Django is allowed to regain his dignity because he is freed by a white man. He reunites with his wife, again, with the help of a white man. Django Unchained isn't about a black man reclaiming his freedom. It's about a white man working through his own racial demons and white guilt."

Controversy

Some commentators, such as the Spill Crew, have felt the film's heavy usage of the word "nigger" is inappropriate, affecting them to an even greater extent than the depicted violence against the slaves. However, other reviewers have defended the usage of the language in the historic context of race and slavery in the United States.

Filmmaker Spike Lee, in an interview with Vibe magazine, said he would not see the film, explaining "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me...I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." Lee later tweeted, "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them." Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, interpreted the movie as "preparation for race war."

Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe compared Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen character to black Republicans like Clarence Thomas or Herman Cain. In character, Samuel L. Jackson said, "I have the same moral compass as Clarence Thomas does."

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan noted the difference between Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Django Unchained: "It is an institution whose horrors need no exaggerating, yet Django does exactly that, either to enlighten or entertain. A white director slinging around the n-word in a homage to '70s blaxploitation à la Jackie Brown is one thing, but the same director turning the savageness of slavery into pulp fiction is quite another."

While hosting NBC's Saturday Night Live, Foxx joked about being excited "to kill all the white people in the movie". Jeff Kuhner wrote a reaction to the SNL skit for The Washington Times, saying: "Anti-white bigotry has become embedded in our postmodern culture. Take Django Unchained. The movie boils down to one central theme: the white man as devil "? a moral scourge who must be eradicated like a lethal virus."

Use of violence

Some reviews criticized the film for being too violent. The originally planned premiere of Django was postponed following the Connecticut school shooting on December 14, 2012.

Thomas Frank criticized the film's use of violence as follows:

Not surprisingly, Quentin Tarantino has lately become the focus for this sort of criticism (about the relationship between the movies and acts of violence).The fact that Django Unchained arrived in theaters right around the time of the Sandy Hook massacre didn't help. Yet he has refused to give an inch in discussing the link between movie violence and real life. "Obviously I don't think one has to do with the other," he told an NPR interviewer. "Movies are about make-believe. It's about imagination. Part of the thing is trying to create a realistic experience, but we are faking it." Is it possible that anyone in our cynical world credits a self-serving sophistry like this? Of course an industry under fire will claim that its hands are clean, just as the NRA has done " and of course a favorite son, be it Tarantino or LaPierre, can be counted on to make the claim louder than anyone else. But do they really believe that imaginative expression is without consequence?

The Independent said the movie was part of "the new sadism in cinema" and added, "There is something disconcerting about sitting in a crowded cinema as an audience guffaws at the latest garroting or falls about in hysterics as someone is beheaded or has a limb lopped off.

Historical inaccuracies

Although Tarantino has said about Mandingo fighting, "I was always aware those things existed," there is no historical evidence that slave owners ever staged gladiator-like fights to the death between male slaves like that depicted in the movie. There are only undocumented rumors that such fights were staged. In addition, Southern slave codes did make willful killing of a slave illegal in most cases. Mississippi's 1822 law prohibited the "cruel or unusual punishment" of a slave.

Writing in The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb observed that Tarantino's occasional historical elasticity sometimes worked to the film's advantage. "There are moments," Cobb wrote, "where this convex history works brilliantly, like when Tarantino depicts the Ku Klux Klan a decade prior to its actual formation in order to thoroughly ridicule its members' (literally) veiled racism." The marauding masked group depicted in the film were known as "The Regulators" and were depicted as spiritual forebears of the later post-civil war KKK and not as the actual KKK.

On the account of historical accuracy Christopher Caldwell wrote in the Financial Times: "Of course, we must not mistake a feature film for a public television documentary" pointing out that the film should be treated as entertainment and in no way a historical account of the time period it is set in. "Django uses slavery the way a pornographic film might use a nurses' convention: as a pretext for what is really meant to entertain us. What is really meant to entertain us in Django is violence." To the contrary, Stephen Marche wrote that "The amazing thing about watching all this is that it's all perfectly Tarantinoesque, but it's also for the most part historically accurate."

Accolades

Main article: List of accolades received by Django Unchained

Django Unchained has garnered several awards and nominations. The American Film Institute named it one of their Top Ten Movies of the Year in December 2012. The film has received five nominations from the Golden Globe Awards, including Best Director and Best Screenplay for Tarantino. The Film won Best Original Screenplay, written by Tarantino. Christoph Waltz received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Bafta Award for Best Supporting Actor, his second time receiving all three awards, having previously won for his role in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009). The NAACP Image Awards gave the film four nominations, while the National Board of Review named DiCaprio their Best Supporting Actor. Django Unchained earned a nomination for Best Theatrical Motion Picture from the Producers Guild of America.