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Essay / Film Analysis of Django Unchained - 700
Django Unchained (2012) by Quentin Taratinos is a bloody, eccentric, revenge-filled western that mines the abdominal chapters of American history. A pre-Civil War western that explores what slavery might have been like in the mid-1800s. The film is partly based on the films Django (1966) and Mandingo (1975). But Taratino incorporates his own style, with gruesome gore, action, wit, cinematography and eccentric characters. Weaving all of this into a solid plot makes the film believable and makes it the most unique western ever made. The film opens with a line of slaves chained together walking through a dark forest. A dentist named Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz) appears and asks for the slave named Django (Jamie Foxx). Dr. King Schultz negotiates with the slave owner to buy Django because he is valuable for finding interesting people. After acquiring Django, they ride across the country, passing the beautiful mountains of the Midwest, the starry skies of Wyoming, the desert west, the snow-capped mountains of the Rocky Mountains, and then head to the plantations of the South. Where they meet one of the largest slave owners in Kentucky. Django meets some of the slaves there where the majority of them are uneducated and talk. Like director Spike Lee who said "I can't talk about it because I won't see it, all I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful." to my ancestors. It's just me...I don't speak for anyone else. Spike makes a valid point here: the film uses the n-word excessively. But the film is about slavery in the 1800s, a time when the word was common. Taratinos' goal is to make realistic films and often focuses on sensitive topics in history. In his films he rewrites history with a vengeance and that's why Django Unchained is