Quentin Tarantino is to cinema what Miles Davis is to jazz – the “King of Cool.” With his movies “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” Tarantino effectively reinvented cinema in the mid-1990s, setting unprecedented stylistic standards. His movies burst with cool dialogue and exaggerated violence and turned the former video store clerk into one of the most important living Hollywood directors ever.
In addition, as a screenwriter, he was responsible for the script of “True Romance” and wrote the plot for Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” – both films are also true milestones of 90s cinema. However, Tarantino’s work as a whole is still viewed critically. The accusation that the director has not yet made a film of his own, but has always chosen only the best from all his favorite films, is still around today. In this article, we want to take a look at the best Quentin Tarantino that you should watch before you die!
There’s nothing worse than repetition or predictability, not even in Tarantino’s world. And we do experience that quite often with his most successful film of all (more than $400 million box office, second screenplay Oscar for Tarantino). An example is a rather laboriously constructed prologue, where Christoph Waltz first wraps people around his finger in a Landa variation and then plays the friendly murderer.
“Django Unchained” begins like a Tarantino parody. With reference to the Italo-western hero in the title and the 1966 “Django” title song that just jumps in your face, it all comes across as over-the-top as it is simple. But when the real Django, as played by Franco Nero, makes a cameo appearance, of all things the director doesn’t know how to take advantage of it – Nero simply introduces himself as “Django” at a bar.
Of course, the first thing a Tarantino disciple who has matured over the years thinks of when he thinks about Tarantino and a) westerns b) guitar and c) the soundtrack? Johnny Cash, obviously. This is why the trailer was already hard to take, the music choice too obvious. The songs of this man resound from every “Urban Outfitters” dressing room these days.
When it became known that Will Smith, who is rarely convincing in dramas, was not going to take on the role of Django after all, every one had reason to rejoice. But his replacement, Jamie Foxx, can never really get to grips with the character.
He is strangely inhibited, and even his – inner – liberation at the end bears the mark of his mentor Dr King Schultz, who is played by Waltz. Who is, of course, bounty hunter and German and dentist. Schultz and his stupid wiggly tooth on the carriage. It is not fastidious about wishing that historical portrayals were reasonably accurate. This fun vehicle is completely out of the ordinary.
Don Johnson and Jonah Hill are irritating with their “we just want to be in Tarantino’s movie” roles. However, whether Leonardo DiCaprio, as plantation owner Calvin Candie realized that he showed more potential in his tragicomic portrayal than in his serious roles? Ever since Scorsese’s 2004 “Aviator,” he has been subscribed to the sweating maniac type, an apparently voluntary restriction, all just to finally get that Oscar.
Then his racist table speech comes, and he theorizes as only Bill from “Kill Bill” did before, and all this ends in crescendo and violence – which could have been anticipated for minutes. At the same time, Calvin Candie is not without curiosity-inducing secrets: Will he be sexually aroused by his slaves’ mandingo fights?
At least the violence, often depicted in an almost pornographic way in Tarantino’s work, is made for this film. And where else could it be more meaningful than here to draw attention to the living conditions of the slaves? Each brutality is shown rightly hurts the viewer, torture, whipping, glowing iron.
In the most impressive scene of the film, the normally sober Schultz spontaneously decides, at the last minute, to become an avenger because flashbacks plague him. One slave was torn apart by dogs in front of him – and we believed that left him cold. “Django Unchained”, with a duration of 168 minutes, was Tarantino’s longest film to date and the first – apart from small flashbacks – completely linear narrative. That paid off; it feels very long indeed.
Still, there was enough here for a nice side-narrative: Tarantino’s linking of his “Southern” to the history of the Germanic tribes, the story of the slaves with that of the Nibelungs, is simply too beautiful. It is a fairy tale that would make a great cinematic narrative. Director hints that Django and his wife Broomhilda von Schaft (Kerry Washington) are the ancestors of a man with a changed last name: John Shaft, The Private Investigator, famous from 1971 Blaxploitation film.
