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5 Baseless Criticisms Of Django Unchained

When you’re dealing with Quentin Tarantino, controversy sort of comes with the territory. All of his films have been met with a healthy dose of outrage and various pleas for the sake of the children and all that is holy etc. etc. Pulp Fiction glorified gangsters. Jackie Brown was racist. Kill Bill was indulgently violent. Inglourious Basterds enabled Holocaust denial. These are often used as conversation stoppers, ad hominem charges against a very vocal and visible and outspoken target that serve to justify a general dismissal of a body of work that is both undeniably alluring and formally difficult. That is to say, Tarantino’s movies are cool and complicated. His most recent film, Django Unchained, is no different.

[h2]5: Quentin Tarantino’s acting is atrocious.[/h2]

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Ok, this one is a legitimate gripe. The provocative “baseless” label can be set aside for the moment. This is one scene in the movie where everyone I talk to agrees it just doesn’t belong. More specifically, he doesn’t belong. He’s trying to pull off some weird Australian accent and his face just looks like he’s so happy to be on camera yet desperately trying not to show it, and no one believes him in this part. It takes everyone out of the movie and redirects their focus onto Quentin’s weird face. And how bad his acting is. I mean seriously. This is the one major criticism of Django Unchained that I will grant without hesitation. It’s the one big misstep.

All considered though, that’s a small objection compared to the others that have been made, largely by people who don’t seem to care what Tarantino is reaching for with Django. While not everyone will be on board with his style—and I wasn’t actually much of a fan until Basterds opened my eyes—there’s much to appreciate here from a racial standpoint. Yes, there are movies like Lincoln that deal with the issue of slavery on a peripheral level, but very few even attempt to tell the stories of these plantations, let alone attempt a fresh genre-mixing take on an era steeped in grave portrayals. Django Unchained offers some welcome variety to a period of time, providing levity but also an appropriate amount of anger and a yearning for justice to be rained upon the perpetrators of the biggest stain on America’s moral reputation in history. It’s easy to become bogged down in intellectualizing deeper meanings and effects of violence and racial depictions, but much more worthwhile to try and understand Quentin Tarantino’s feelings about victims in the face of the most egregious injustices, expressed in a language all his own.

Do you have issues with Django Unchained? Do you have issues with people who have issues with it? Have your say in the comments section below.