A few days ago, I went to go see Django Unchained and I decided to make a review post about it! I am in no way trying to pass off as a critic or anyone who's trying to know what they're talking about. This movie's been on my mind all day and I just wanted to put my thoughts about it out there.
First off, I want to say that this movie is brilliant in my opinion. I can honestly say I've never seen any movie like it. I expected a generic action/comedy movie set in the time period during slavery. Specifically, 2 years before the Civil War. The only reason I was interested in seeing this after watching the trailer for the first time was because the theme of the movie seemed unusual and undone before, repeat: slavery. But I was completely wrong and blown away by the content.
This film absolutely horrified and disgusted me, but in a "good" way, if that makes any sense. The only way to specify that last sentence is to describe to you some of the happenings that I found to be the most disturbing scenes I'll probably ever see in a movie:
- Two black men have to fight to the death (that being the main source of entertainment on the planation) when one snaps the other's arm, gouges out his eyes, and finishes him off by bashing him in the head with a hammer.
- A slave on the plantation is torn apart/eaten alive by dogs because he expresses his wishes of not wanting to participate in the fighting anymore.
- Django's wife gets whipped and branded in the face for attempting to run away.
It was incredibly hard for me to watch these scenes because of the indecency so explicitly shown to human beings. While I found the brutality of these and similar scenes to be so disturbing and maybe even too macabre to be shown in film at all, I greatly appreciated the honesty of it. I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie half as much if Tarantino had sugar-coated/down-played the punishments and deaths Especially if he had chosen not to catch the victim's reaction/facial expressions on film but focus the death scenes on the killer's face instead, like so many action films. I compare these types of scenes to those of the Saw movies. Extremely visual, difficult to watch, and cringe-worthy.
I think Tarantino did an astonishingly brilliant job, especially with the dialogue. Like I said before, I have never seen an action film like this one and the honest visual of it is half the beauty.
Now on to my favorite actors!
After thinking for a long while, I've tried picking a favorite character between 2, but it's impossible for me to: Calvin Candie or Django Freeman.
Candie is played by Leonardo DiCaprio and I'd never been especially impressed with DiCaprio until I see this movie. Candie is the owner of the most important/main plantation in the movie, nicknamed "Candyland". I found it extremely unusual for DiCaprio to play a character such as this. Southern, charming, and cruel. But he played the part so beautifully that I feel as though Tarantino designed the character specially for him.
Django, obviously the main character, is played by Jamie Foxx. His emotion throughout the film was so believable, played the witty scenes incredibly, and I felt that his dialogue came naturally to him. A+ for Jamie!
So that's was just a mini review over this movie, and I hope it helped you decide whether or not you should see it! I definitely think faint-hearted people should NOT watch it. Thanks for reading!
XO, Blue
