What filmmaking techniques does Django Unchained use?

CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Django Unchained (2012): Revisionist Genre Argument, Scorsese Visual Citation, Anachronistic Soundtrack and Violence as Cathartic Argument.

Who directed Django Unchained?

Quentin Tarantino directed Django Unchained, released in 2012. CineCode also covers Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Death Proof (2007).

What films are similar to Django Unchained?

Films that share techniques with Django Unchained include Inglourious Basterds (2009), Joker (2019), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Shutter Island (2010).

Drama · Western

Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino, 2012

A freed slave teams up with a German bounty hunter to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. It's a revenge Western that rewrites the genre's usual rules. The release you get from the violence makes you feel what polite history lessons have always kept abstract.

2 Narrative 1 Cinematography 1 Sound

At a glance

Django Unchained is a 2012 drama and western film directed by Quentin Tarantino. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (2 narrative, 1 cinematography and 1 sound), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Inglourious Basterds uses several of the same techniques.

Narrative

Revisionist Genre Argument

Using a genre's familiar rules, like its heroes and its violence, to take those rules apart. The film turns your expectations into a political point the genre usually avoids.

How this film uses it

The Western has a set language of righteous violence: the gunslinger, the showdown and the rescue. Tarantino takes that language and puts a Black man at the center of a slavery revenge fantasy. The satisfying violence of the genre gets pointed in a new direction. The pleasure Westerns always gave you now serves a different version of history.

Where to see it

Django's final confrontation at Candyland. The Western showdown is staged as payback for history.

Cinematography

Scorsese Visual Citation

Copying the camera choices, look and tone of a famous filmmaker or film tradition on purpose. It is an open homage that invites comparison and makes your knowledge of film history part of the meaning.

How this film uses it

Robert Richardson's cinematography uses Sergio Leone's techniques throughout. You get the fast zoom into faces during standoffs, the vast sky behind small figures and the close-up on the gun hand. Tarantino makes it obvious that his film belongs to Leone's tradition, and then he turns that tradition's politics in a new direction.

Where to see it

Django's first appearance as a free man on horseback. The Leone zoom tells you what kind of film this will look like.

Sound

Anachronistic Soundtrack

Playing music from a different era, such as hip-hop, rock or pop, over a story set in the past. The clash comments on how those past events connect to the present.

How this film uses it

Rick Ross's '100 Black Coffins' and Jim Croce's 'I Got a Name' play over the pre-Civil War South. The music is from the wrong era on purpose. It argues that this history is still with us, and that what these songs mean today matters to what you are being shown.

Where to see it

Django and Schultz riding through the snow to 'I Got a Name'. A 1970s pop song plays over the pre-Civil War landscape.

Narrative

Violence as Cathartic Argument

Building up tension and then releasing it in explicit violence that carries the film's moral or political point. The violence makes you feel what historical distance has turned abstract.

How this film uses it

The film's violence runs from the Mandingo fight to the dogs to the final shootout. Tarantino stages all of it at an extreme intensity. He wants to take away the comfortable distance that lets people discuss slavery without feeling it. The violence is meant to be too much, because the history was too much.

Where to see it

The Mandingo fight sequence. It is staged so intensely that you get no visual comfort at all.

Questions

Django Unchained: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does Django Unchained use?: CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Django Unchained (2012): Revisionist Genre Argument, Scorsese Visual Citation, Anachronistic Soundtrack and Violence as Cathartic Argument.
Who directed Django Unchained?: Quentin Tarantino directed Django Unchained, released in 2012. CineCode also covers Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Death Proof (2007).
What films are similar to Django Unchained?: Films that share techniques with Django Unchained include Inglourious Basterds (2009), Joker (2019), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Shutter Island (2010).

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