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I wrote recently about the Foul Films that make up our era's movies. I reviewed Anna Karenina with Keira Knightley, and discussed why I would not watch Django Unchained.
One of the actors in Django Unchained is Leonardo DiCaprio. I think he's a talented actor, and has managed to show good performances in a number of films in the past ten years, including The Aviator, Revolutionary Road, The Departed and Catch Me if You Can. I think his break out role was in Titanic, in 1997.
Recently, though, he's gone into the dark side. He acted in a couple of movies bordering on the horror genre, Inception and Shutter Island (I review them both here, under the blog title Zombie Zeitgeist). They are both so insidiously evil, that I kept having recurring nightmares, in day light (one of the films deals with disintegrating buildings). I was temporarily rendered paranoid.
During an interview after the Golden Globes, he says that he's taking a break from filmmaking. He looked tired and weak. The reason he gave for his break was that he felt that he'd been going non-stop for a number of years. But that should be par for the course for actors.
I think the real reason is that Django exhausted him, with its evil and violent theme. His role in the film was as Calvin Candy "A ruthless plantation owner."
Here is an interview he did for the film's promotion:
This was my first attempt at playing a character that I had this much disdain for. It was an incredibly uncomfortable environment to be in... I've seen racism growing up but the degree I had to treat other people in this film was disturbing. It was a very uncomfortable situation... One of the pivotal moments for me and this character, was this initial readthrough, and I brought up, 'Do we need to push it this far? Does it need to be this violent?'... And [the actors and Quentin] said, 'If you sugar-coat this people are going to resent the hell out of you.' By holding the character back you're going to do an injustice to the film. That was the thing that ignited me into going where I did with the character.