By Julie Griffin
A confection of visions, DJango Unchained, a black slave of 1858 America, named Django suffers the kind of violence that eventually forces the victim to fight back and take his kingdom by force. During the film, the emotion set forth by violence that even the director stated did undermine the kind of violence taken against black slaves in the antebellum south, Mr. Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) plays an amazingly realistic role as a white antibellum sugar cane plantation owner, so sadistic you almost smell the blood he enjoys spilling. Everything about him, from the stamped ring he wears on his finger, to his calm and yet knowing arrogant and presumptious demeanor seems vaguely familiar. DiCaprio, who normally plays a good boy, seems to endemically ease down to the role of the southern gentleman who only kind on the outside, and while kissing his sister on the cheek one moment, makes no compulsion to send a slightly disobedient slave to a feast for his dogs the next.
Therefore, also the irony of the last name, the kinds of violence the man enjoys and delivers, even without giving too much of the film presently in theatres away, of almost everything Candie does, nothing is sweet. The film, a myriad meaning of motif also makes a connection to the well-known 1960's Django film, directed by film classicist Sergio Cobucci, Django Unchained, obviously somewhat engineered out of the original and while some critique writers may find themselves prone to fall to the temptation to categorize the film as simply a spaghetti western ~ This kind of minute presumption undermines a very serious work of endearment, also a likely classic for years to come.
The film clearly demonstrates, and while unveiling and making numerous serious parody of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, just a taste of the attitude of the white people of the south at the time toward blacks. Even the southern church, along with the way everything tied into the absolution of the stamp of approval on slavery ~ Black slaves as most victims of the crime of such abuse and control, often shaped their own personalities to fit that of the master's bidding. DJango deals with one such elder black man at the end of the film for not standing up for his own black people, and for even contributing to elongated abuse during captivity, such as the time he played a key role in having DJango's wife confined by lock-up in the hotbox. Her gratitude for his later rescue of her and the image of the southern plantation in ruins brought many a literary and otherwise symbolic historical analogy to mind.
Even in the late 1880's however, an actual educated slave and a true story, an unusual feat for the time, Harriet Jacobs wrote of her account as a slave in Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. But because of the danger to herself, her life and that of her family, even she had to mark the work as fiction, even though it was not. One passage of the book gives way to the true thoughts of the day, and just a mere glimpse regarding the often dark philosophical system which dominated blacks of the south. And while the name meaning of DJango also means coming to the light, or the awareness of that light and awakening, so many slaves began to come to a complete awareness of the situation in which they lived as wrong.
"I resolved to give him no cause to accuse me of being too much of a lady, so far as work was concerned I worked day and night, with wretchedness before me. When I lay down beside my child, I felt how much easier it would be to see her die than to see her master beat her about, as I daily saw him beat other little ones. The spirit of mothers was so crushed by the lash, that they stood by, without courage to remonstrate. How much more must I suffer, before I should be "broke in" to that degree?" 2
A name similar to that of the hero of our film, DJango, the Djangu tribe, one of many indigenous tribes of Australia, interestingly the objectives of this group held a system of belief similar to that of the many levels of the critical meanings of the film. Also that the slavery practice of Australia past mostly consisted of the British using of black slaves to work the sugar cane fields, the same kind of fields worked by black Louisiana slaves at the Evergreen Plantation, and the slave farm of the actual on location filming work of DJango Unchained made the film all that more realistic. The Djangu of Australia formed a linguistic system of speaking based on an anthropological label called Yolngu Matha and with a dozen different dialects which stem from a belief system of the name of the language system, which actually means the word, people. "The Maḏayin creates the state of Magaya, which is a state of peace, freedom from hostilities and true justice for all." [3][1]
DJango takes a job as bounty hunter for a white German man, after the man releases him from a line of chain ganged slaves. He gives all of the freed slaves the perogative to choose the fate of the man who owned them. And DJango leaves on horseback, as a symbol of the restoration of lost dignity, alongside the wagon of the man to hunt down wanted criminals for government bounty faire. Everything seems to run smooth until the two head to the deep south of the state of Mississippi to rescue or purchase Django's wife from a magnificent and huge plantation almost exclusively run by the black slaves who belong to Mr. Candie. Mr. Candie, a man anything but savoir-faire, the French phrase means to do the right thing, and yet Candie does everything evil, and yet with grace, the second part of the word meaning enjoys ~ And so he does at such things as a parlour room Mandingo fight, where his black male slaves fight a fight before him for his pure pleasure and entertainment to the death. Joined by his new guests, who came for the secret rescue of his German speaking slave, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), Candie accompanied by a comfort girl, another black slave, directs the winner of the death match to enjoy a drink at the wet bar there afterwards. His later reference to a lot of small details such as the invitation of the two guests to enjoy white cake after a very heated business deal for a forced and greater amount of money originally procured ~ The film thick with a symbolic host of meanings in addition to the obvious includes a waxed and stamped formality of one important document, and the southern insistence for the upper-hand at all times through the demand of the gesture by Mr. Candie to seal the deal with a handshake.
The closure of the film illustrates the perfect fantasy of every female and black victim who likely ever walked the earth as Foxx commits the perfect chivalry through his rescue of the slave Broomhilda, and defending her honor by his valor, proves himself a man of deboinair passion. Deboinair meaning gentle, courteous, and sauve, all things of course which the plantation owner, Mr. Candie only imitates, but for a whole different motive. The departure of DiCaprio from his long-running record as a good guy to play a surprising bad boy role as the sadistic slave owner of the Candie cotton and slave plantation ~ Of course, the analogical reference here only begins to hint at the predication of a lot of violence in the film. With realistic and therefore some very graphic violence revealing something a lot more close to the foul mistreatment of black slaves pre-civil war, and with the introduction of slave and plantation owner, Mr. Candie (Leonardo Di Caprio), the perfectedly wretched man contrasts even with his guests, the two bounty hunters DJango and Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist and his wife's (DJango) releasor from the unfair debt of human slavery.
At the recent 70th Golden Globe Award for 2013, Christoph Waltz won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and Director (And writer of the film), Quentin Tarantino won the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. As above, Foxx and DiCaprio worked well together to define the distinct difference between right and wrong points of view.And of course, the discourse of personality fluctuation compared between DJango and Candie, with all things comparable, while deboinair meaning gentle, courteous, and sauve, all things of course which the plantation owner, Mr. Candie only imitates, but for a whole different motive.
http://mysteryshortstories.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/banana-boat/
The Evergreen Plantation Website & Virtual Tour:http://evergreenplantation.org/index.php
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