Django Unchained (2012)

Quentin Tarantino is definitely at the top of his game as a director. This movie is on par with other great Tarantino movies such as Inglorious Bastards, Pulp Fiction, and Reservoir Dogs. The movie had great performances by actors Leonardo Dicaprio and Samuel L Jackson. I think that Samuel L. Jackson should be a contender for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars with his role as Stephen the head household slave. Stephen's complete disregard for other black slaves and his blind public support for owner Calvin Candie brought a dynamic to the movie that I think viewers today can only look on in astonishment that relationships like that might have existed in the 19th century Antebellum South. Christopher Waltz had another great performance as Dr. King Schultz. The Germanic legend of Siegfried and Broomhilda and how it plays out at the Candiland plantation really brings depth to the narrative plot. Not to give away too much of the ending but Dr. Schultz screws over his friend Django by not shaking Candi's hand as a pivotal point in the movie. However, in thinking about the situation after the movie I admire that he did shoot Leonardo DiCaprio's character Candi. It showed that Dr. Schultz's devotion to the law even when his personal convictions of public decency were being pushed to the limits was trumped by his own personal convictions or right and wrong. Dr. Schultz's had no problem shooting the sheriff if front of all it's citizens because he was WANTED criminal. But in shooting Candi he was disregarding country and state laws of murder and taking on the frontier western code of personal vigilantism into his own hands because he despised Candi as a human being. I also thought this movie had a lot of themes that are relevant today. Although slavery is long gone from the Southern United States there still is emphasize on placing monetary values on things that are difficult or deplorable to do so. In the movie there was a lot of business discussion about a human being's (slave) worth in dollars. Today we are also seeing discussions about placing monetary values on things that are difficult to comprehend, such as certain complex insurance products or even the monetary value of the pollination process bees are responsible for. Although the movie needed comic relief I think the pre-KKK raid on Dr. Schultz's dental wagon was awkward and overreaching for an easy laugh. The scene had a weird South Park reference. One of the raiders references Cartman from the South Park cartoons with the phrase "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Besides that scene the overall flow of the movie was good and had a steady mix of light humor; including Django's blue Austin Powers outfit. What this movie was best at was conveying the main theme, at least the one I interpreted, true love triumphs even when your personal identity and sense of humanity are stripped away from you living the life of a slave. Stories like this reveal a true human quality that is common to all and shows examples of the great lengths people will go through for true friendship or the one's they love. It's an inspiring story because it shows that it is difficult to strip away all of a human's spirit even if they have lived through a lifetime of inhumane conditions.