Django Unchained
I went and saw Django Unchained yesterday. I think you'll all be pleased to know that it's the third to last film left on my schedule, I only have two more to go, and I'll have watched all of Tarantino's films on the big screen this month!
I love Django Unchained, I knew this going in, but it's been a while since I saw it last, and I fell in love with it all over again. I went and saw this three times at the cinema when it first came out, and since I was a bit of a Christoph Waltz fangirl at the time, my viewing experience was focused on him and his performance. I definitely had a different experience this time around. I tend to tell people that I don't really like romance, but thinking back, some of my all time favourite films center around epic love stories, so I guess that's complete bullshit then.
And what a beautiful love story this is! The fairytale structure works so well, it almost makes me a little angry.
Django Unchained is definitely a more visual experience than say Reservoir Dogs, but I guess Tarantino started this style with Kill Bill. There is heavy use of music to set the mood and move the story along.
The dialogue here is just as funny as in his other films, but it's more precise and succinct. The film gives you a lot of opportunities to simply look at the visuals and process what's happening, it let's you breathe a little. I'm just contrasting this against The Hateful Eight, which is much more dialogue driven. There's no room for the visual breaks you get in Django, and I guess maybe that's why people feel there's too much talking. I can only speculate, but it is possible that since it was another Western Tarantino film, people were expecting something like Django Part 2, and not the claustrophobic and almost theatre-like Hateful Eight.
The relationship between Dr. Schultz and Django is so fascinating, and more than a little heartbreaking. Dr. Schultz takes Django into his world, and Django learns, adapts, and patiently completes the tasks he's assigned, but when Django has to take Dr. Schultz along into his world, everything falls apart. Staring reality in the face, Schultz just isn't able to play along anymore. Honestly, I'm not sure what to think of Schultz' blasé attitude towards the world he lives in, but then again, what were his alternatives?
I looked up the script, and there seems to be so many differences between the script and the final film, I'm now really curious about what sort of changes they made - I think I need to read it. I was originally just going to look up how Django's blue outfit is first described, and I'm surprised to find that in the script, it's Schultz who picks out this outfit for him, Django doesn't like it at all (and it's described simply as "a powder blue satin Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, that wouldn't be out of place in the court of Marie Antoinette at Versailles."). I'm glad they changed this, but a little disappointed, because there are so many cool Internet theories going around about it. It's always bugged me that people laugh when we first see Django in this blue outfit, but I guess it was always meant to be a little uncomfortable and funny.