D.imenticate the Django by Sergio Corbucci and that of Quentin Tarantino. In the homonymous tv series signed by Francesca Comencinipreviewed at the Rome Film Festival and on Sky and Now from 2023, the legendary gunslinger is in crisis and grabbing the scene in western co-produced by Italy and France are le women: one young orphan and one bad sui generisalmost possessed.
Our director re-reading the myth And paying homage to himtogether with Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli, screenwriters of Gomorrah – the seriestells of our time, of contrast between identities, opening and fear towards minority cultures. Django on the one hand it blew us away, on the other it intrigued us: what awaits us after the first two episodes? How will Sarah and Elizabeth’s characters evolve?
The first two episodes of Django
United States, 1872. Seven years after the civil war, slavery was abolished, however blacks continued to suffer in the south of the country. discrimination and violence. Somewhere in Texas a former slave, John Ellis (Nicholas Pinnock), and Sarah (Lisa Vicari), a young orphan they found New Babylonone city where everyone can be free and equal. Those who enter must deposit their weapons. The foreigner also enters Django (Matthias Schoenaerts), looking for the only survivor of the family after a carnage: his daughter Sarahwho is about to marry Johnwhose children define it a ruthless tyrant.
A few miles from New Babylon rises Elmdale, the city of the rich where whites still protect their privileges. To stand up Lady of the city is Elizabeth Thurmann (Noomi Rapace), powerful and ruthless enemy of Elliswhose purpose is to break free from sinners in the name of God. A war will break out between John and the Lady with the Hot Gun, all the more so when Sarah he discovers that under New Babylon there is none other than the Petroleum. While the struggle between two opposing views of community becomes more bloody, Django will try in every way to win the heart of daughter, convinced that it was he who caused the death of the family. The cowboy seeking revenge in the movie Corbucci and in that of Tarantino it transforms almost as an observer of the scene and more focused on the sphere affective and emotional.
The main characters of Djangothe series
Django (Matthias Schoenaerts)
Julian Wright (Matthias Schoenaerts), said Django, is a mysterious gunfighter, a stranger with a tragedy behind him. His (Margaret) wife and their children were massacred, while he was away, fighting on the wrong side of the American Civil War. Soldier’s pay was the only way to feed him. That is why he was not with his family that night of the massacre. Many years later, he discovers that Sarah, the daughter he thought he had lost, is alive. For him it is an opportunity to become the man and father he never managed to be. And maybe even to find out who killed the family.
Little Sarah with dad Julian (Matthias Schoenaerts). (Sky)
Sarah (Lisa Vicari)
She is an orphan, or at least this is what she has always thought since her family was massacred. She is a midwife, but she is also much more: she is the real glue that holds New Babylon together. As a child she was inextricably linked to her father Julian until the day he left, without even saying goodbye, and his whole family was massacred. It was John Ellis who rescued her, who raised her as a daughter. After the death of the wife of John, begins to feel another kind of love for him. In the midst of them marriage one of Ellis’s children puts on, in love with Sarah.
Elizabeth Thurmann (Noomi Rapace)
She is the Lady of Elmdalethe city of the rich where whites still protect their privileges. She is John’s half-sisterfor which he has mixed feelings: on the one hand he sees it as the fruit of his father’s lust and the cause of his mother’s madness, on the other, he’s the only man I’ve ever loved. For Elizabeth John is the embodiment of evil, which is why she has given herself to the fear of God and puritan values, to the point that she considers it her duty to eliminate sinners living in New Babylon. She defines herself as an “echo of the word of God”.
John Ellis (Nicholas Pinnock)
African American, enlisted in the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War, he became an officer in charge. In the war he lost his eldest son and ex-wife. Based on his ideals he founded New Babylon. John lives there with his children (Philip, Seymour and Kevin) and with Sarahwhich she adopted as a child and has now become the woman who is about to marry.
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