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Several Great Things in the Central Bloodbath Shootout

posted 9 months ago by roger1 (3626)
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Its sort of interesting to me how Tarantino developed, over time, from a writer-director whose greatest strength was his unique writing of DIALOGUE...and into a great director of ACTION, too.

He never lost the facility for dialogue(this is what makes him a true "auteur," LOTS of people can direct action)...but the action man sort of emerged and you could see it happen:

It happened after he took a six year break between Jackie Brown(1997) and Kill Bill Part One(2003)

His first three films --- Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown -- had violence and shootings and SOME action...but starting with Kill Bill, things got BIG:

The Bride versus all the Samarai swordsmen and women("The Crazy 88's") in KIll Bill 1.

The final car chase in Death Proof(an ode to CGI-free stunt driving.)

The various shootous in Inglorious Basterds and...

...Django's one-man-army assault against a bunch of armed redneck henchmen in Django Unchained.

THAT shootout starts dramatically with the deaths of two stars of the movie and once the two of them are dead, Django leaps into action to shoot his way out of the Antebelllum Southern mansion that is Candyland while rescuing his bride, Hildegaard.

That's the first great thing about the shootout -- it is so deeply emotional given that it starts when a good man (Schultz) dies and converts into Django's raging gunbattle against an ever growing small army of henchmen. Everybody has guns, its a true shootout.

But then QT does things to make THIS shootout something different that what we have seen before(even as it owes its essentially bloodiness and massiveness to the seminal "Wild Bunch" of 1969.)

ONE: As each redneck takes a bullet hit, he SCREAMS IN PAIN, and then KEEPS ON SCREAMING, and the screams of pain mix with ANGER and RAGE. Anyone who has ever hit themselve on the thumb with a hammer knows how the pain turns to rage and you starting kickilng things in anger. QT moves that emotion into getting hit by bullets -- we've always wondered what it feels like to get shot -- this movie says: it HURTS, you SCREAM, and you RAGE.

(Compare this to how, in the final Wild Bunch bloodbath gunbattle, our anti-heroes get hit mulitple times by bullets and just keep soldiering on, dragging themselves to take over the machine gun in the story, flinching slightly or grimacing as each bullet hits - but never screaming in pain.)

TWO: When you've got a bloody gunbattle to film, there is some pretty standard blood we've seen over the years -- bright red like paint, black like oil, somewhere in between.

Well, QT seems to have decided that when HIS blood bags burst on men in this movie -- the blood will discharge each time in a watery explosion of PURPLE-PINK blood. The effect is as if each bullt is hitting a water balloon filled with Hawaiian Punch! Literal EXPLOSIONS of blood(with weird, watery sound effects to compete the water balloon effect.) Its blood hits as we've never seen them before and it is GREAT to look at. (And to listen to, as the surreal soundtrack makes every bullet sound like a soaring rocket on target to explode and every hit DOES explode in sound.)

THREE: As the gunbattle rages on, a lot of the rednecks hit by Django's bullets all start collapsing to the floor -- they aren't dead, but they can't move(if they DID survive, which they don't, they would live on as cripples) and they STILL KEEP getting hit by bullets(Django's sometimes their own) and they SCREAM with each hit, and the blood STILL explodes as if from Hawaiian punch water balloons. This is at once a very bloody sequence(QT trademark) and almost surreal in its mix of exploding water balloons, purple-pink blook and men screaming in pain. (One of them screams when a bullet shatters a door frame and sends wood splinters into his eye -- a realistic, gory touch.)

FOUR: Against a soundtrack of rhytmic, melodic rap, Django fires one bullet at an opponent and the result is a "slow motion gas": we watch the bullet emerge from Django's gun, enter the opponent's front, go out the opponents BACK and then continue on to snuff out a candle and break some glass on its way into an adjacent dining room -- COOL. Great shot!

And yet...

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

..and yet...

Django Unchained had the bad luck to release in December of 2012 in the vicinity of the "Sandy Hook gun massacre" in the United States -- an insane teenage boy went into an elementary classroom and killed children much younger than him. A horror. A tragedy.

And as QT, Leo and I think Chris Waltz sat for a promotional interview for Django Unchained, the interviewer elected to lead with the question about how such a "violent gun movie" could be in release in light of the Sandy Hook children's massacre.

I recall the film people suddenly shifted, it was in their eyes: "How did THIS turn into THIS?" As I recall, the actors rather froze silently and looked to Tarantino to respond. HIs face darkened. There are plenty of examples on the internet of interviews where QT would get angry when asked about the violence in his movies in general (one time he yelled: "I"ve said this a million times -- my movies are violent because its FUN!") but here with the children's deaths added in, you could tell he was holding back. He remained calm and said something like "They're not connected. Look we are just here to promote a movie. Its a WESTERN. There are gunfights in it."

And the moment passed. But of course, QT left unsaid that is a very VIOLENT Western, with a very VIOLENT gunbattle near the end (and some after that) and...that perhaps there is WORSE violence shown in the two slave men having to fight each other to the death and another slave being torn apart by dogs. In some ways, "Django Unchained" spoke to the REALITY of violence with a nod towards the real life horrors that Sandy Hook represented(and of course, "Django" was all about racial things and that took Sandy Hook off the table too.)

I'm reminded that Sam Peckinpah kept defending his historic "Wild Bunch" bloodbath shootout by saying "I wanted to show the reality of gun violence -- its bloody and painful" when frankly he SHOULD have said what QT said: "It's FUN."

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

Because the gunbattles in "The Wild Bunch" and "Django Unchained" ARE fun. "The Wild Bunch" gunbattle was HARDLY realistic -- many of the shots were in slow motion(several different SPEEDS of slow motion) intercut with normal speed. And there is slo mo in the Django gunbattle, too -- that great shot of the single bullet floating across the screen to snuff out a bad guy and a candle.

Slow motion, great editing, great action movement, great SOUND(explosive pistols, rifles and a machine gun in The Wild Bunch; heat seeking missile bullets that explode on impact in Django) for lovers of action cinema -- you can't beat these two gunbattles.

And in both movies, the battles are pitched between men of violence. The Wild Bunch may be outlaws who sometimes kill innnocents , but they become noble at the end and sacrifice themselves in an evenly pitched gunbattle against "worse guys." Django takes on a small army of rednecks who enforce torture and death on slaves. The violence is enjoyable to watch, pleasurable.

Which is why, indeed, Django Unchained and its righteous gunbattle -- staged with all the fantasy effects available to QT at the time -- has no connection to the real life horrors of something like Sandy Hook.