The Cineaste's Lament.

Director Quentin Tarantino (Guardian Photo)

Writing In The Guardian …
… this morning, critic Ben Childs voices some concerns about “Pulp Fiction” director Quentin Tarantino’s plans for a film about an escaped slave (Jamie Foxx) who partners with a German bounty hunter (Waltz) to take out the plantation owner where he was once held captive.

Here’s the nut graf:

“Apparently, the issue of slavery, with all its attendant bearings on the troubled history of American politics, were not powder keg enough for Tarantino, who also decided to throw forced prostitution into the equation. At various points in Tarantino’s leaked screenplay, Broomhilda is reportedly raped, whipped and forced to expose herself publicly while being auctioned. Worse still, that’s apparently pretty much all there is to Washington’s role. If true, it smacks of the worst kind of objectification.

It seems as if Tarantino is again taking a serious issue and shooting it like a breezy genre flick. But how does a film-maker with a love of exploitation flicks handle scenes in which genuinely hideous exploitation is taking place? The very term Candyland hints at something rather wrong-headed here. Will Tarantino be able to resist glamorising the very activities that, one assumes, his film will spend a great deal of time condemning? And if he fudges the issue, won’t that undermine the vein of breezy, amoral irreverence usually so ubiquitous in his films?”

Read the full story here.