Django Unchained on France 4: “I, Quentin Tarantino, can put on James Brown if I want to”

The director recounted his iconoclastic western on the cover of Première in 2012.

Django Unchained returns to television this Thursday evening on France 4 (and the next day in free streaming on the France Télévisions website). A few months before its cinema release, in September 2012, the main actors of Quentin Tarantino’s western made the headlines of First (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz were on the cover of issue 427) and the filmmaker spoke in a special report dedicated to the film. When we met him on set, Quentin Tarantino said to himself “artistically at its peak”. “Everything I have done so far has brought me to this level of confidence, competence and ambition. Django Unchained is my new Everest ». How did he climb it? Ascent of Everest, instructions.

The choice of music
“It’s an important ritual for me, a long process that begins before I’ve written a single line of script and continues until the final hours of editing. First, I think of a story I would like to tell. Then I delve into my collection of records and film scores, trying to find the cement that will hold together the bricks of the house I am about to build. With luck, I quickly find what will become the soundtrack for the opening credits. At that moment, I was so excited that I decided to commit three years of my life to the project… The score, the “extradiegetic” music, it’s my responsibility, and I choose what I want. I never worried about whether this or that piece was anachronistic or not. Obviously, Django is not going to show up at an afternoon tea party and play James Brown on an old PA. But I, Quentin, can put some James Brown on this stage if I want to. »

The mix of genres
“Originally, Django Unchained is inspired by the spaghetti western, or macaroni western, as it is called in Japan. Other references emerge gradually, borrowed in particular from revenge films, but in a way which, even for me, is very unusual, you will see. There are also touches of American westerns and black westerns like Buck and his accomplice or Boss Nigger. And to be honest, Django directly refers, from a thematic point of view, to The Ring of the Nibelungby Richard Wagner. It has this operatic dimension. In the film, Christoph Waltz recognizes Jamie Foxx as a real Siegfried (character from Wagner’s “Tetralogy”) and tells him: “When a German meets a Siegfried in real life, it’s not nothing! »

The right to laugh
“I can’t help but put humor in my cinema, I don’t know how to do otherwise. I like my films to be funny when they should be and then suddenly they’re not funny at all. I love manipulating the public in this way, it’s my big favorite. Comedy, comedy, comedy… Stop, we’re not laughing anymore! I take great pride in this ability to be able to make people laugh with completely twisted things. A strange, smuggler’s laugh: “Damn, do I really have the right to laugh now?” Django Unchained full of these kinds of moments. »

Neither laws nor rules
“I am no longer the filmmaker I was when I started. I have reached a new stage in my career and I know that my films reflect it. Today, when I write a screenplay, I write a long, evolving novel without laws or rules. From Kill BillI know how to organize my scripts, how to cut them and modify them as I move forward. I see what is important and what is not, I constantly adapt. It no longer has anything to do with the method used on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction And Jackie Brown – at the time, I was writing a screenplay and I spent my days scrupulously filming it. Django Unchained is very close toInglourious Basterdsthese are two companion films made by the same mature filmmaker. There is a potential trilogy behind all this, but I don’t yet know what the third part will be. Until then, I think that for my next feature, I will return to a smaller canvas, to a cool and compact story like before. I might even get back into detective fiction…”

Building your legacy
“All my films are painfully personal. People who know me know that. If in thirty years, a kid who knows nothing about my cinema likes one of my films and decides to familiarize himself with my work, I want to make sure that he is not disappointed when he watches the next one. I want to be sure he recognizes me. For me, it comes down to a solid and consistent filmography. »
Comments collected by Benjamin Rozovas

How exactly are Quentin Tarantino’s films related?

The story of Django Unchained : In the South of the United States, two years before the Civil War, Dr. King Schultz, a German bounty hunter, acquires Django, a slave who can help him track down the Brittle brothers, the murderers he is looking for. Schultz promises Django to give him back his freedom when he has captured the Brittles – dead or alive. While the two men track the dangerous criminals, Django does not forget that his only goal is to find Broomhilda, his wife, from whom he was separated because of the slave trade… When Django and Schultz arrive at the immense plantation of the powerful Calvin Candie, they arouse the suspicions of Stephen, a slave who serves Candie and has all her trust. Their slightest movement is now watched by a dangerous organization that is growing closer and closer… If Django and Schultz want to hope to escape with Broomhilda, they will have to choose between independence and solidarity, between sacrifice and survival…

Trailer: