The Tarantino phenomenon

Quentin Tarantino shone in 1992 with his first directorial venture, a low-budget feature Street dogs, to become an international star two years later thanks to its enormous success Petparach stories. Although there were ups and downs in his career, Tarantino during the past three decades, he has not lost his importance and remains among the most respected, popular and influential directors. A skilled compiler and homager, he left a deep mark on the seventh art and gained a million-strong army of faithful devotees.

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They are currently being shown in cinemas around the world and in our country Sinners, a film by screenwriter and director Ryan Coogler that deserves a full recommendation for its courage to successfully interweave several genres (historical drama, musical, horror), and which at the same time, as Coogler does not hide, was created under the direct influence of the script that Tarantino wrote for Roberto Rodriguez about thirty years ago. Just like today's cult action horror From dusk till dawn (1996), as well as Kugler's Sinners somewhere in the middle they have a turn from one genre to another. Although Sinners manage to hold their own, Tarantino's influence is obvious. And that, of course, is not accidental. From an outsider from the video club, Tarantino over time became (and remains) an author who combines two seemingly opposing tendencies: his films were praised by critics, screened and won awards at the world's most important film festivals, and at the same time they are communicative, the audience loves them, which generally results in excellent box office success. Many screenwriters and directors claim to be his heirs, but Tarantino still remains "untouchable" and "unattainable".

Now it's time to go back some fifteen years in the past... As is well known, Django's Revenge is Tarantino's revisionist revenge western from 2012, winner of two Oscars (for best screenplay - Tarantino, for best supporting actor - Christoph Waltz). The main character Django (played by Jamie Foxx) is a former slave who becomes a bounty hunter in the middle of the 1966th century, and the film, with all the narrative twists that Tarantino is prone to, primarily follows Django's mission during which he tries to free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from the brutal slave owner Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio). Django is helped in this by his mentor, the hardened doctor King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). As you might expect, the film is full of Tarantino's signature elements – very dark humor, snappy dialogue and twisted characters. Additionally, Django's Revenge was inspired by the spaghetti western subgenre, and in particular by Sergio Corbucci's XNUMX film Django, starring Franco Nero. Tarantino has always had a preference for the emphatic expression of the Italian genre film, which he uses abundantly in Django's Revenge, including, as is his custom, other elements in the story, emphasizing the slave relations in the USA.

It's no secret that Django's Revenge saw a comic book adaptation shortly after its premiere. Reginald Hudlin, who was also one of the producers on the film, translated the first draft of Tarantino's script into a graphic novel that was published in seven installments under DC's Vertigo edition. This adaptation was premiered in the USA in early 2013, and System Comics recently published a translation into Serbian, which Ivana Sretenović took care of. It is a representative edition, hardcover, in color and on luxurious paper, perfect for Tarantino fans.

Hudlin gathered a representative group of comics artists for his venture, first of all Rajko Milosevic Gera (signed here as: rm Gera), who drew the largest number of panels, as well as Jason Latour, Denis Cowan, John Floyd and the Croatian illustrator Danijel Žeželj. From the first panel, the effort to maintain the atmosphere and tone of the film is visible. Before us is a vivid, dynamic and brutal story, which brings the development of only indicated characters and situations in the film. The plot has been expanded with several new narrative decorations that are not in the film, which contributes to relief, and the development of Broomhilda's fate, which in the comic book adaptation is a sort of flywheel of the plot, stands out.

The design of the characters, according to Tarantino himself, was not supposed to visually resemble the actors from the film, but the cartoonists still pay homage to the striking faces of Fox and DiCaprio, while Dr. Schultz in the comic book version is more reminiscent of a young Tom Skerrit naked than Christoph Waltz. The violence is drawn in such a way as to disturb, there is no looking away, and the whole story from the first to the last page has a "dirty" and dark tone. Among cartoonists, Gera, a Serbian artist who has gained a world-renowned name in the world of comics, stands out. It's a shame that there wasn't time for Milosevic to draw all 200 or so pages of this comic: his style and expressiveness best suits the theme and Tarantino's style.

The comic book Django is primarily intended for completists and die-hard Tarantino fans, but, luckily, there are quite a few of them in Serbia. The quality of this edition is also reflected in the fact that the comic can be read even without film knowledge, because it has its own self-sufficiency and independence. This beautiful, luxurious edition is enriched with about twenty pages of additional material, Gera's sketches and panels before coloring, which allows us to peek "behind the curtain" and at least to some extent get to know the process of creating the comic. What this edition lacks is a preface or an afterword, but the text you are reading can serve that need. The comic book "Django" is a really nice reunion with the poetics of the famous author, and that is at the moment when we are waiting for Tarantino to finally start filming his tenth and (allegedly) last feature-length independent directorial. For additional reading, we recommend Tarantino's two books, which were published not so long ago by the Belgrade-based Laguna: an autobiographical-filmophile treat Cinematic reflections and the novel version of Tarantino's latest film Once upon a time in Hollywood, both translated by Goran Skrobonja.