DJANGO UNCHAINED A BRILLIANT QUENTIN TARANTINO FILM ABOUT SLAVERY AND INEQUALITY IN THE WILD WESTERN DAYS OF PLANTATIONS CRUEL OWNERS OF BLACK AFRICAN SLAVES GETTING EVEN STARRING JAMIE FOXX CHRISTOPH WALTZ KERRY WASHINGTON SAMUEL L JACKSON LEONARDO DI CAPRIO 2012 MOVIES A TO Z COLUMBIA SONY PICTURES

Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx as Dr King Schultz and Django Freeman - great casting, brilliant performances. A superb view of what if, a black African was better than their white captors. As ever, Quentin Tarantino hits the nail on the head, by daring to explore, and portray how dreadful life was for the Africans stolen from their homes, and transported to America for profit. Slavery in many forms persists. In the modern world, this is more likely to be financial and mental torture, as non-productive politicians and bankers exploit citizens contractually, living off the sweat of the ordinary men and women - just like the colonial masters of old. In a world where land ownership and control, means people have to work many times harder, just to survive. While those in positions of authority, whip and beat people up metaphorically, in the quest for interest payments, on money that is not real, just paper promises. This is a climate issue, as carbon footprints are significantly increased, to make payments that are kept artificially high. A sustainability issue for the United Nation's members to contend with. The good news being, that the chains are now monetary. And it is illegal to kidnap people, or own another human as a chattel. Though, human trafficking is still an issue in some countries. And freedoms are restricted in communist administrations, in particular. That is why it is so important to be able to make films on controversial topics. Movies that stir the imagination, without state interference.

Django Unchained is a 2012 American revisionist Western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Michael Parks, and Don Johnson in supporting roles. Set in the Old West and Antebellum South, it is a highly stylized, heavily revisionist tribute to spaghetti Westerns, in particular the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci (the star of which, Franco Nero, has a cameo appearance). The story follows a black slave who trains under a German bounty hunter with the ultimate goal of reuniting with his long-lost wife.

Development of Django Unchained began in 2007 when Tarantino was writing a book on Corbucci. By April 2011, Tarantino sent his final draft of the script to The Weinstein Company. Casting began in the summer of 2011, with Michael K. Williams and Will Smith being considered for the role of the title character before Foxx was cast. Principal photography took place from November 2011 to March 2012 in California, Wyoming, and Louisiana.

The premiere of Django Unchained took place at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on December 11, 2012, and was theatrically released on December 25, 2012, in the United States, grossing over $426 million worldwide against its $100 million budget, becoming Tarantino's highest grossing movie to date. The film received acclaim from critics, mainly for Waltz's performance and Tarantino's direction and screenplay, though the film's usage of the word "nigger" and the film's graphic violence drew controversy. The film received numerous awards and nominations, winning two out of five nominations at the 85th Academy Awards. Waltz won several awards for his performance, among them Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTAs. For his screenplay, Tarantino won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA.

PLOT

In 1858 Texas, brothers Ace and Dicky Speck drive a group of shackled black slaves on foot. Among them is Django, sold off and separated from his wife Broomhilda von Shaft, a house slave who speaks German and English. They are stopped by Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter seeking to buy Django for his knowledge of the three outlaw Brittle brothers, overseers at the plantation of Django's previous owner and for whom Schultz has a warrant. When Ace refuses to sell Django to Schultz and threatens him at gunpoint, Schultz kills him and shoots Dicky's horse in order to pin him to the ground; he advises the freed slaves to take the opportunity for revenge. Schultz offers Django his freedom and $75 in exchange for help tracking down the Brittles.

Django and Schultz kill the Brittle brothers at Spencer "Big Daddy" Bennett's Tennessee plantation. In turn, Bennett pursues them with an armed posse. Schultz ambushes the posse with explosives and Django kills Bennett. Feeling responsible for Django, Schultz agrees to help him find and rescue Broomhilda, and Schultz trains Django to become a bounty hunter. They return to Texas where Django collects his first bounty, keeping the handbill as a memento and for good luck. He and Schultz rack up several bounties before spring when they travel to Mississippi and learn that Broomhilda's new owner is a member of the American gentry Calvin J. Candie, the charming but cruel owner of the "Candyland" plantation, where male slaves are forced to wrestle to the death in brutal "Mandingo" fights.

Schultz and Django hatch a plan: deciding that Candie will refuse to sell Broomhilda if they try to buy her upfront, they will instead offer $12,000 (equivalent to $406,000 in 2022) for one of his best fighters as a pretext to acquiring Broomhilda for a nominal sum. They meet Candie at his gentlemen's club and make the offer. Intrigued, Candie invites them to Candyland. En route, the group encounters Candie's slave trackers who have cornered D'Artagnan, an escapee Mandingo fighter. Django is forced to intervene when Schultz attempts to buy D'Artagnan on the spot to save him. Candie has the trackers' guard dogs maul D'Artagnan to death, visibly upsetting Schultz.

Having told Broomhilda of their plan, Schultz offers to buy her as his escort while negotiating the initial Mandingo deal during dinner. Candie's staunchly loyal and suspicious head house slave Stephen realizes that Broomhilda knows Django, deduces their plan, and alerts Candie. Enraged, Candie alters the deal at gunpoint to sell Broomhilda for $12,000 instead of the fighter; Schultz reluctantly agrees. During the sale's finalization, Candie threatens to kill Broomhilda if Schultz does not shake his hand to seal the deal. Having had enough of Candie's arrogance, Schultz impulsively shoots and kills Candie. Butch Pooch, Candie's bodyguard, kills Schultz, and Django kills Pooch, Candie's lawyer Leonide Moguy, and several of Candie's henchmen in a prolonged gunfight, but is forced to surrender when Broomhilda is taken hostage.

The next morning, the chained Django is tortured and about to be castrated by overseer Billy Crash when Stephen arrives, informing him that Candie's sister Lara, who has taken charge of the plantation, has ordered him to be sold to a mining company and worked to death. En route there along with other slaves, Django devises an escape plan and uses his first handbill to prove to his escorts that he is a bounty hunter. He falsely says the men on the handbill, from his first bounty, are at Candyland and promises the escorts a share of the reward money. Once released, Django immediately kills his escorts, retrieves his clothes and weapons, and returns to Candyland with dynamite.

Recovering Broomhilda's freedom papers from Schultz's corpse, Django bids his deceased mentor goodbye and avenges him and D'Artagnan by killing the trackers. He then frees Broomhilda just as Candie's mourners return from his burial. At the mansion, Django kills Lara, Crash, and the remaining henchmen, releases the two remaining house slaves, and kneecaps Stephen before igniting the dynamite he had planted throughout the mansion. Django and Broomhilda watch from a distance as the mansion explodes before riding off together.

CAST

- Jamie Foxx as Django Freeman
- Christoph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz
- Leonardo DiCaprio as "Monsieur" Calvin J. Candie
- Kerry Washington as Broomhilda "Hildi" von Shaft
- Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen Warren
- Walton Goggins as Billy Crash
- Dennis Christopher as Leonide "Leo" Moguy
- James Remar as Butch Pooch / Ace Speck
- David Steen as Mr. Stonecipher
- Dana 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 Fontenot as Luigi
- Escalante Lundy as Big Fred
- Miriam F. Glover as Betina
- Don Johnson as Spencer "Big Daddy" Bennett
- Franco Nero as Amerigo Vessepi

Other roles include James Russo as Dicky Speck, brother of Ace Speck and erstwhile owner of Django. Tom Wopat, Omar J. Dorsey, and Don Stroud play U.S. Marshal Gill Tatum, Chicken Charlie, and as Sheriff Bill Sharp respectively. Bruce Dern appears as Old Man Carrucan, the owner of the Carrucan Plantation. M. C. Gainey, Cooper Huckabee, and Doc Duhame portray brothers Big John Brittle, Roger "Lil Raj" Brittle, and Ellis Brittle respectively, overseers of both Carrucan and Big Daddy's plantations.

Jonah Hill plays Bag Head #2, a member of Bennett's masked white supremacist group. Additional roles include Lee Horsley as Sheriff Gus, Rex Linn as Tennessee Harry, Misty Upham as Minnie, and Danièle Watts as Coco. Russ Tamblyn and his daughter Amber appear as townspeople in Daugherty, Texas; their roles are respectively credited as "Son of a Gunfighter" and "Daughter of Son of a Gunfighter". Zoë Bell, Michael Bowen, Robert Carradine, Jake Garber, Ted Neeley, James Parks, and Tom Savini play Candyland trackers. Jacky Ido, who played Marcel in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, makes an uncredited appearance as a slave. Michael Parks as Roy and John Jarratt as Floyd, alongside Tarantino himself in a cameo appearance as Frankie, play the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company employees. Tarantino also appears in the film as a masked Bag Head named Robert.

PRODUCTION

In 2007, Tarantino discussed an idea for a type of Spaghetti Western set in the United States' pre-Civil War Deep South. He called this type of film "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. ... 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 about 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 cross over 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 the blacksmith character from RZA's film appear as a slave in an auction. However, scheduling conflicts prevented RZA's participation.

One inspiration for the film is 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 a 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. Tarantino credits the character and attitude of the German dentist turned bounty hunter King Schultz to the German Karl May Wild West films of the 1960s, namely their hero Old Shatterhand.

The title Django Unchained alludes to the titles of the 1966 Corbucci film Django; Hercules Unchained, the American title for the 1959 Italian epic fantasy film Ercole e la regina di Lidia, about the mythical hero's escape from enslavement to a wicked master; and to Angel Unchained, the 1970 American biker film about 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. Smith later said he turned down the role because it "wasn't the lead" and was "not for me," but stated he thought the movie was brilliant. Tyrese Gibson sent in an audition tape as the character. 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, a Mandingo trainer and Candie's right-hand man, but Costner 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's 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. Hill later appeared in the film in a different role. Joseph Gordon-Levitt said that he "would have loved, loved to have" been in the film but would be unable to appear because of a prior commitment to direct his first film, Don Jon.

FILMING

Principal photography for Django Unchained started in California in November 2011 continuing 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 centering 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 July 2012.

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 on Tarantino's Kill Bill. Raskin was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Editing but lost to William Goldenberg for his work on Argo.

Kerry Washington sought to bring authenticity to her performance in several ways. The actor playing her overseer used a fake whip, but Washington insisted the lashings really hit her back. And to dramatize her punishment inside an underground, coffin-size metal container, she and Tarantino agreed she would spend time barely clothed in the "hot box" before the filming began so the feeling of confinement would be as realistic as possible.

BROKEN GLASS INCIDENT

During the scene when DiCaprio's character explains phrenology, DiCaprio cut his left hand upon striking the table and smashing a small glass. Despite his hand profusely bleeding, DiCaprio barely reacted and remained in character under the astonished eyes of his fellow actors. He is seen taking out pieces of broken glass from his hand during the scene. After Tarantino's cut, there was a standing ovation by the other actors to praise DiCaprio's performance despite the incident; Tarantino, therefore, decided to keep this sequence in the final cut. DiCaprio is seen with his left hand bandaged in the scene after when he is signing Broomhilda's papers. Contrary to popular belief, DiCaprio wiped fake blood on Washington's face in a separate take.

THEATRICAL 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 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 delayed by one week following the shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

The film was released on March 22, 2013, by Sony Pictures in India. In March 2013, Django Unchained was announced to be the first Tarantino film approved for official distribution in China's strictly controlled film market. Lily Kuo, writing for Quartz, wrote that "the film depicts one of America's darker periods, when slavery was legal, which Chinese officials like to use to push back against criticism from the United States". The film was released in China on May 12, 2013.

HOME MEDIA

The film was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital Download on April 16, 2013. In the United States, the film has grossed $31,939,733 from DVD sales and $30,286,838 from Blu-ray sales, making a total of $62,226,571.

RECEPTION & CRITICS

Django Unchained grossed $162.8 million in the United States and Canada and $263.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $426 million, against a production budget of $100 million. As of 2013, Django Unchained is Tarantino's highest-grossing film, surpassing his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, which grossed $321.4 million worldwide.

In North America, the film made $15 million on Christmas Day, finishing second behind fellow opener Les Misérables. It was the third-biggest opening day figure for a film on Christmas, following Sherlock Holmes ($24.6 million) and Les Misérables ($18.1 million). It went on to make $30.1 million in its opening weekend (a six-day total of $63.4 million), finishing second behind holdover The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 291 reviews, and an average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Bold, bloody, and stylistically daring, Django Unchained is another incendiary masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino." Metacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, gives the film a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

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." Ebert also added, "had I not been prevented from seeing it sooner because of an injury, this would have been on my year's best films list." 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." 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."

To the contrary, Owen Gleiberman, film critic for the Entertainment Weekly, wrote: "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 Yorker's 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."

An entire issue of the academic journal Safundi was devoted to Django Unchained in "Django Unchained and the Global Western," featuring scholars who contextualize Tarantino's film as a classic "western". Dana Phillips writes: "Tarantino's film is immensely entertaining, not despite but because it is so very audacious—even, at times, downright lurid, thanks to its treatment of slavery, race relations, and that staple of the Western, violence. No doubt these are matters that another director would have handled more delicately, and with less stylistic excess, than Tarantino, who has never been bashful. Another director also would have been less willing to proclaim his film the first in a new genre, the 'Southern'."