If you think Django Unchained is violent, Quentin Tarantino has a historical reality check for you: Try slavery.
The Pulp Fiction auteur is back with a revenge flick that, according to early screenings, pours on the blood and gore. Tarantino told an audience of British Academy of Film and Tele-vision Arts members recently that if anything, he spared the lash in his depiction of slavery.
"We all intellectually 'know' the brutality and inhumanity of slavery," Tarantino said, "but after you do the research, it's no longer intellectual any more, no longer just historical record - you feel it in your bones. It makes you angry and want to do something. . .
. I'm here to tell you, that however bad things get in the movie, a lot worse s---actually happened."
Tarantino's comments indicate that he anticipates the irreverent Django Unchained - which opens on Christmas Day - will court controversy for setting its story against the backdrop of the slave trade.
The film centres on a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who partners with a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) to take down a plantation owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) who controls his wife. Candie, who speaks with Magnolia-scented menace in the trailers, owns a mixed-race club in Greenville, Miss., and deals in slave-fights.
Perhaps because the film features Tarantino's trademark sardonic humour, some early viewers have compared Django Unchained to the works of Mel Brooks.
But despite the humour, in an interview with Howard Stern, Tarantino indicated that he took the responsibility of depicting slavery seriously. In particular, he said that shooting a scene where a female slave is brutalized brought him to tears and deeply impacted the crew.
