Not audiences who appreciate excellent filmwork. This is like saying gourmet food isn't made for people because more people eat at Chili's. No idea what this means. Pulp Fiction was adored when it came out. Oooh, hoodwinked. Good thing you're here to show us the man behind the curtain, I guess. Haha, you literally named the one movie he has named after a genre. True Romance would be better, because it doesn't re-work the genre it's in. Or Natural Born Killers. Name anyone's movie that isn't part of a genre. QT just likes older genres. You're a weirdo and your opinions on Tarentino's motivations are weird. If he made films only for himself nobody would like them and they would not be the critical and box office successes they are. Your reasoning that it's all an accident is stupid. All? You do know his entire filmography, I take it.
Yes, I do. Some people got it, and loved it. A few didn't get it, and were put off by the violence. But it was instantly wildly successful, and became "canon" pretty much immediately. Tarantino didn't train his audiences. That's ridiculous. His audiences loved him from the get-go. For that matter, most critics appreciated his skill from the very beginning. Edit - Bill covered this (and much more) much better than I did. Thanks, Bill.
Ugh, I hate line by line replies. My point was that people who make excellent film work don't worry about what people will like. It's counter productive. All artists love their fans, but most of them don't care about what their fans want. This is called creativity. I'd prefer you responded to the actual point, but whatever. The point you're making is that a filmmaker who has spent most of his career re-writing and re-shooting his favorite movies isn't self-indulgent? (omg please ignore the horrible narrator - the point is the frame by frame comparison) Note: I completely disagree with the premise of that video. I don't think Tarantino is a thief, or even that he isn't unique - but he clearly lifted ideas from that, and other films. It's kind of his thing, again, if you don't have a decent grasp of film history (as Tarantino clearly does) lots of his ideas come off as 100% original and some of them are. But he used to work at a video store for fuck's sake. He's constantly tipping his hat to other films and filmmakers. He does this more than any director I can think of. You're right, True Romance is a better example, too bad he didn't direct that movie. We have no idea what direction he would have taken it had he been behind the wheel. There's a big difference between genre films and films in a genre. Genre films rely heavily on the repetition of a few basic concepts and tropes. Two easy examples: Skyfall is a genre film: it's a spy movie The Conversation is a movie about a spy but it's not a spy movie. Edit: removed butt hurt fuck you's. Bill: I don't know how many creative projects you've been involved in, but a great deal of art is happy accident. Listen to any directors commentary, or band talk about an album, or writer tell you about their process - the best ideas come out of nowhere. Nobody is thinking "Oh man, what do my fans want next?!?" They make work to please themselves first, and if they are smart, and good at what they, do you're going to like it, probably. Making art to please other people is a really easy way to make crappy art. Anyway, nothing I'm saying is particularly weird or controversial, you just don't like hearing contrary opinions I guess. It's like the first fucking line of his Wikipedia page: "Tarantino has been dubbed a "director DJ", comparing his stylistic use of mix-and-match genre and music infusion to the use of sampling a DJ exhibits, morphing a variety of old works to create a new one.[7]" Tarantino is a huge film geek, and likes to flaunt that all over the place - I think that's self-indulgent, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill.
Dude... you declared something I wrote as "nonsense". Granted, I have no desire to do pistols at dawn over such a minor insult, but it's about on par with calling you a weirdo.
Point taken but, I said something that you said was wrong. He said that I'm a weirdo. One's rhetorical, the other is personal. But I get it, it's Bill, that's his thing. It's not a big deal. I took that out because I don't mean it: Bill's the best! Re: Nonsense: All I meant was: "Everything you said was wrong. Here's why." Didn't mean to antagonize you at all.
On a separate note, thank god Tarantino discovered Christopher Waltz. That guy is so good. He also managed to pull a really great performance out of DiCaprio - something I didn't expect at all. In fact, pretty much the whole cast worked their asses off. I was a little bummed by some of the inappropriate laughter in the theater I was in. In a movie that is full of really funny moments, hearing people chuckle at the word "bitch" is disappointing.
Fine, I'll write one long paragraph if that makes it easier for you. That is not how creativity is defined and I'm sorry but your notion of how great, entertaining films are made is wrong. Also you changed your argument from "what viewers would like" to "what fans want," and those aren't necessarily - and often - the same thing. I know you know that. Also you saying he worked in a video store, watching a lot of films, and so he has no concept or care for what a film he makes would look like in terms of someone watching it? OK. Tarentino re-wrote and re-shot all of his films, each one based on one other film? Yes, color me surprised, and please don't confuse that with me not getting that he draws inspiration from older films. Like, no shit. And this makes him self-indulgent. Aren't all directors who have the ability to film what they want self-indulgent? OK we can't use films he only wrote, fine. However you want the goal posts arranged. Your example is still terrible. It's named after a genre. I am not sure what your goal is in explaining a lot of obvious stuff that doesn't only apply to Quentin Tarentino based on your own explanations. Also i am waiting for you to tell me about all the creative stuff you've been a part of, because I know that is where we are headed sooner or later. I like hearing contrary opinions that are valid, not ones that single out a filmmaker for traits plenty of other filmmakers have and criticize him for it. Tarentino isn't making "art," he's making films that have big budgets and play on a lot of theater screens and if you don't think he makes concessions, edits, or alterations or has them made on his behalf by his crew to make the film more entertaining then you don't know much about high profile film-making. These aren't painting hanging in a gallery. That doesn't mean they are devoid or artistic merit or that a film director isn't or can't be an artist, it's just a misappropriation of terms for comparison. And who gives a shit about what someone else said about him on his wikipedia page.
Oh I meant I hate writing them. You can pick apart my logic in whatever format you please! Hopefully, I'm not moving the goal posts. I didn't mean to frame those as different concepts - we're talking about a film geek who makes movies that appeal to film geeks. True Romance is fair game in a discussion about Tarantino, but I just think it's worth noting that he didn't have full control over that movie like he does for pieces that he directed. And you're right - it's much more divorced from source material than most of the other movies he's made. Jackie Brown to now he's spent alot of his career doing the remix thing. He's really good at it, but I'd like to see him work from somewhere else for a change. We probably actually agree on the nature of how movies are made, and think we just happen to be talking past each other, so I'll let that one go. Not what I'm saying at all. There's a difference between being influenced by something and wearing your influences on your sleeve. The example presented in that clip is probably as bad as it gets as far as cutting and pasting. I don't actually have a problem with it anyway, but pretending it isn't there is to me, ignoring a big part of who he is as a filmmaker. We don't have to call him an artist if you don't want - it's just short hand. I think this argument is getting semantic, and you're starting to read things that I don't think I'm saying. So I'll just leave it at this: Dude makes really cool movies that I find irritating - mostly because his writing - to my ear - is incredibly self-indulgent. We can argue about what that means, but if you don't see it, you don't see it. I think he spends too much time writing overly complex speeches and he relies on those way too much. He annoys me in the same way Mamet annoys me - his writing style is so fixed. I always know what I'm getting, and I completely understand why people love it, but I find it irksome, to varying degrees. Tarantino's movies are worthwhile and I'm going to see everyone of them until one of us is dead because I like it when geeks win.
Well I won't argue with that. Honestly, his penchant for doing stuff like that warded me off from Django until I heard some good word of mouth and reviews.
I'm late to this thread obviously! I agree with most of what you said, up until the part about Spike Lee's objections being deserved (assuming that's what you meant; everyone has a right to say anything about anything). It's interesting that you invoke the Coens as examples of filmmakers who strive for realism. Which of their films are you talking about? I would argue they are just as guilty of creating stylized art as Tarantino is. Tarantino strives for more of a seventies pulp style than they do, but neither should be held up as a portrayal of accuracy. I don't find Django exploitative, and part of that is because it doesn't go for accuracy, it goes for myth. Tarantino depicts slavering villains and larger-than-life heroes to swat them down. The point is to give the audience some catharsis. If I thought Tarantino wanted to make a serious political point or depiction of slavery with this film, then I could see the exploitation argument. But I don't think he does.
Like it or not that word was used a great deal in the south (and north) during that time in American history. To do a movie set in the south, on a plantation, and then refuse to use it in the movie would just be strange I think.
Spike Lee's criticism of Tarantino's use of the n word goes back to Jackie Brown, and even there I'm sure he was building on its employment for shock value among other things in Pulp Fiction (I'm thinking most specifically of the Tarantino role in the movie). Again, the use makes sense in context, sort of, but in those films it was more of an artistic choice than in Django; it's safe to say that Quentin Tarantino's body of work uses the word in ways that are worth talking about at the least if you're interested in either movies as art or in terms of their societal heft. That is, you can appreciate QT as an artist and as an entertainer as I do and grant him the benefit of the doubt for whatever the hell that's worth and still recognize that it's valuable to ask those questions about an issue that will likely never be settled in my lifetime. The thing with Lee is that in my view he failed to do something constructive with that idea as a filmmaker in Bamboozled (much as I appreciate it as an experiment), and I have trouble taking his Koontzian review of Django seriously in its own right. I guess that's my own weird way of saying that I appreciate him saying something even if I don't like how he chooses to go about it or ultimately agree with him. I wish it was simpler, though. It's just tough to work with words that are practically weaponized in entertainment, even in the DMZ of a comedy stage and most certainly in a big movie like this one.
I finally found the summary bit of this I was looking for. This 4 part series is pretty good. The author's main point is that artists go through a process. Copy, Combine, Transform. Kill Bill was certainly a master remix, in large part. Though Django has remixed elements, I think it's a step above a remix.
I don't think the Coen's strive for realism so much as they pick a linguistic style and do it justice. Everyone of their movies occupies a very specific time and place. Comparing their take on American English dialect in True Grit to Tarantino's is the comparison I was talking about. But even in No Country for Old Men, they spoke at length about trying to make sure their dialogue was not only authentic Texan, but specifically the region of Texas that the film takes place in (El Paso?). Obviously, I'm taking their word and the actors words for it to a center extent. I appreciate Spike Lee voicing his opinion, and it's not infallible. I do think he should watch the movie and then actually respond to it - but watching it I had the distinct sense that I'd never know what it would be like to watch this movie as an African American - a turn of phrase I am now overusing - for better or worse. I don't so much agree with him, as I am glad that somebody is making the counter-point. I won't bother comparing his work to Tarantino's because that's not really instructive of anything. Lizard King's post kind of nails it really, but I thought I'd put it in my own words as well.
I'd never suggest that he not use it. I just think that Tarantino, as a writer, gets some enjoyment out of it. I would call his use of the word almost gleeful in certain situations. However, it's about the same as how he uses other... I don't know how to say this without it sounding dumb... other swear words? I feel like I'm in elementary school. He likes to take "bad words" and ride them like they're a horse. Fuck that sounds even worse. I'll just shut up.
Your dashes are officially on notice along with your failure to use the canonical plural of "Coenses". But I see your point, across the stylistic hypocrite battle lines.
When you give a one line description of the film, "Tarantino spaghetti western slaver revenge flick", you have said more than 95 percent of the words needed to describe it. We know Tarantino. We know the tropes of the genre. It comes down to execution, and it was brilliantly executed.
Some great Django interviews, but highlighted here is Samuel Jackson addressing the That Word issue in his own special way. Immediately following that is a great explanation of how it is that he ends up being a piano player in Kill Bill.
Just caught this today and one reason I really liked it is that it didn't reek of self-congratulatory film nerdiness as much as most of his films. In fact, to me (after one viewing, mind) it was a rather non-QT film. I didn't find the dialogue particularly overwrought nor the violence mockingly overdone, with one or two mild exceptions. Somehow this reminds me of Jackie Brown, my favorite QT film (excluding Pulp Fiction which truly is heads and shoulders above anything else he's done and above what most modern filmmakers have done in the last couple decades), and was in contrast to some of his heavy-handed film cred demonstrations in Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Death Proof/Grindhouse, etc. I'd like to escalate this: never cast himself as anything ever again. Rewatch his scenes in Pulp Fiction sometime during The Bonnie Situation sequence. Yeah the situation and directing and all that is awesome and funny, but his delivery/timing/presence in front of the camera seriously reminds me of high school Shakespeare productions featuring non-thespians. His casting in Django was horrific; besides the really fucking bad accent, he's clean-shaven while the other two are grizzled and he's clearly the stupidest among them based on his lines/duties.
One thing I'm sure of is that Quentin Tarantino will cast himself in every movie he directs and in every movie he can beyond that. It's all building up to a career peak where he casts himself in a one man Broadway act as Samuel Jackson.
"Does he look like an actor?" "Noooooo!" "Then why you try to cast him like a actor? Yes you did, Quentin, yes you did!"
Saw it again today with my mom, since I knew that she would like it and wanted to see it again myself. Still good, and really got to savor the details of Steven and Calvin and how they play off each other. Also, the bloody hand scene was even better this time around, and the dog scene much, much harsher when you know it's coming.
I saw this last night, and had very mixed feelings. I felt that it was kind of a mash-up between three movies: a semi-serious thriller about slavery, a "Blazing Saddles" parody, and a 70s-style exploitation film. I loved the thriller parts, and to a lesser extent the parody parts, but I hated the "exploitation" parts. I also didn't feel like these aspects of the movie were integrated at all. I hated the ending. I thought the shoot-outs were incredibly dumb, boring, and way too long. I also felt that the movie was on the edge of saying something interesting about slavery, and then just totally collapsed into a silly shoot-out. I gather some people found the ending cathartic; I just thought it was ludicrous and a waste of a good set-up. It's probably a matter of taste, really. I don't much enjoy 70s-exploitation films or spaghetti westerns, so it's not surprising that an homage to those films would not work for me. Watching an homage to a film style you don't know or don't appreciate is often an exercise in frustration, but not one that can fairly be blamed on the director. I do like Tarantino, but I like his movies best when he plays it a bit more straight. I didn't like Kill Bill or Death Proof, and this movie reminded me of those in many respects. It's also really long and it seemed like there were a lot of scenes that could have been cut without hurting the movie at all. Here's an example: I did like many aspects of the film; some of the performances were remarkable and I was totally on board until about the 2/3 mark. It just felt like a huge missed opportunity to me.
The drop off is part of a series of scenes demonstrating how they spent the winter. The scene establishes not only that they are well-known to the marshal, but that there's a place that offers at least a glimpse at an alternate reality to the starkly racist confrontations that fill much of the rest of the film. Thus, Django is not in hell by default, but must go through it for his quest as per the myth that frames the story. If anything, I wish the same craftsmanship had been applied to the Dynamite Aussies scene. The movie was long but didn't feel long, either time I saw it. From snippets in the soundtrack and what I assume is true, I expect a fair bit was cut as it is. I don't really think of it primarily as an homage, and I think the forms of exploitation are adapted to entirely different ends in terms of the ideas the movie is expressing. That is, I don't think the vision of race and slavery it contains is one that results in a missed opportunity so much as a relatively subtle piece in an often loud movie.
I may have missed the point, I guess. I have no idea what the movie was trying to say about race and slavery, beyond that these things were terribly brutal and as horrific as anything in a slasher movie. I agree that the movie was not primarily an homage, but for me, the parts that were most clearly intended as references to other movies (eg. the shootouts, blood squibs, etc) just felt boring and dumb. Hence the climatic fight scene(s) left me cold. I should be clear - some of the truly graphic violence was very effective and really left me thinking. What I didn't like was the buckets of fake blood, cheesy shootouts, and the other silliness (e.g. Django smiling into the camera). That stuff did nothing at all for me and consumed most of the end of the movie.
I think there were a number of things about slave hierarchy and plantation culture specifically that were brought into sharp relief by the presentation in the film. The numbers game around the stark appraisal of human flesh, as it passes through so many mouths that have such a different role in that food chain, is beautifully captured; when Django is playing the game to get to his goal, you as the audience member are really sucked into the moral calculus of the time as expressed in the film. QT has a couple of different speeds for violence, but as it becomes less the punchline than the context for his movies he seems to be moving away from the sort of understated "realistic" gesture that characterizes (for instance) Jackie Brown's pivotal scenes. This film has a bit of that, such as with the sniper shot on the father in front of his child, but it's definitely not the fundamental approach. Someone mentioned Nat Turner and John Brown earlier, and I think it's striking that they are still remembered as extremists/madmen/terrorists/etc in the American canon; in a way, Django's ludicrous violence is Tarantino's "equal and opposite" reaction piece. It really felt like he picked up all of the pieces he was toying with in Basterds and pointed them somewhere more purposeful than just his love of film. Contrast with the bearded "maniac" of the painting or real life. It's not just that, of course, as if you find ultraviolence distracting it's not going to work no matter what. But to me the ultraviolence is saying look away and *then* look closely. But then, for me Tarantino movies have always lived and died by the quirks in the dialog and the character relationships, even back when the violence was itself the message.
I really did like those aspects of the movie. As I said, I was basically on board for the first 2/3 of the movie. For me, the movie took an inexplicable turn into silliness The movie stopped being about the characters and their dialogue, and turned into an intentionally bad action flick. I think it depends on what you mean by ultraviolence. I don't have any problem with violent movies, including graphically violent movies. I just don't find violence per se interesting in any way. So if the violence is being put to good use then I'm fine with it; when it is just blood squibs everywhere I'm just kinda bored. I watched a ton of super violent movies in college, and so this stuff has no ability to shock or titillate me any more. I agree with you that Tarantino's real strengths are dialogue and character relationships. Django starts off playing to those strengths, but by the end all of that stuff goes to the wayside. That's what disappointed me: I would have liked this movie to have a character-driven climax, and for me it did not.
Fair enough. For me, the gunplay at the very end was decoration around the confrontation with the funeral party and Steven (I count six bullets...), which I thought was magnificent and tied in nicely with the overarching vision of responsibility in the food chain, just as the gunplay before that was setting up the castration scene and so on. The shooting of Calvin is pushed out of the way quickly so we can see Steven's embrace, and so on. Anyway, different strokes.
Two things turned up on reddit today: the script, and an alternate beginning concept drawing. Apparently lots of bits and pieces were cut here and there, no idea if they were filmed at all.
Also it's kind of weird how reading various comments and knowing Tarantino basically had to make an article to explain it that people were confused as to why they did not just offer to buy the girl instead of a fighter at the plantation. There's already a scene in the movie where that question is asked and explained so a 5 year old could understand it.
I thought that was a strange criticism too. It makes sense both on a plot level, and thematically in that Django and King want to free her without participating in the slave trade. That's why King is so pissed at the end: not because he lost the money, but because he didn't want to be have to buy someone's freedom. Or that was my interpretation anyway.
Nah that decision only happened at the end when he is listening to Beethoven (a black or mixed composer) and thinking about the man who was torn apart and being fed up with the hypocrisy of it all. Then he just wanted to get out of there and shaking Candie's hand was the last straw. Tactically foolish of course but it fits with the theme of King always being in control until the ride up to Candieland when he starts to lose his grip on the situation (offering to pay for the slave up the tree and Django having to vocally condemn the man to keep their cover.)
Huh, I had different interpretations of both those scenes. I thought King offered to buy the slave to put Django in a position where Django could show Candi just what a total hardass Django was. I thought that because the dog scene follows the conversation where Django explains to King why Django is being so hard on the slaves. I thought King was upset at the end because why he'd objected to slavery on principled grounds before, only after seeing a man torn apart by dogs did he realize how terrible it actually was, and how he could not be complicit in it. This can be contrasted with his views on slavery at the start of the movie, where he was willing to buy Django if it suits his purposes. Your interpretation is totally valid too, I just took something different away from those scenes. I haven't read interviews or anything so I don't know what Tarantino intended those scenes to mean.
I got the same thing out of it as Adree. It seemed to me that an important part of the evolution of Django as a character was watching him take charge of the situation after his period of apprenticeship. Schultz is a professional so he knows how to recover when he fucks up and is given an out, but the stuff that Django is able to withstand (and then only barely, as a result of his extraordinary temperament and personal experiences/incentives) is a product of a lifetime of brutalization that is simply beyond the reach of an outsider to the plantation. The reaction to Beethoven/flashbacks perfectly crystallizes that processes, as his purely emotional reaction to Candie's insistence on the handshake. Candie sees it as a reaction to being out-gamed, but that's because he's a monster.
I based most of what I wrote on some very good posts here http://www.avclub.com/articles/django-unchained,90197/ Some examples:
It's likely just me inserting my own narrative into the movie, but I also thought there was an element of resignation to Schultz's decision to shoot Candy. Almost as though Candy's insistence on having the handshake was the final straw which made Schultz realize that Candy was never going to let them leave alive at all, and was merely toying with them. He figured, if he was going to die anyway, might as well take Candy down with him. There's nothing really to support this theory in the movie, other than some facial acting from Waltz, but I could still see it as being feasible.
