Tarantino On ‘Django,’ Violence And Catharsis

In Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx plays the title character, a freed slave turned bounty hunter searching for his wife and their plantation tormentors.

As is the case with all of Tarantino’s films, Django Unchained is incredibly violent. We spoke to the director before the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and before critics had taken him to task for the film’s brutality. The film also is being debated for the way it brings humor to the story of slavery.

Yet Tarantino insisted then — as he does now — that his new film has a good heart. It’s a love story, he says. And, as with his previous film Inglourious Basterds, it’s also a brand of revisionist history he hopes Americans will find cathartic.