I did not go into Django Unchained expecting to dislike it. Quite the opposite; I really, really wanted to like to like the movie.
Full disclosure: I’m mixed-race with African and European Jewish heritage. While my ancestors were not slaves in the American South, they were in the Caribbean. And the only Quentin Tarantino movies I’d seen before this week were Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2, and I didn’t like them all that much.
Despite my hopes, I didn’t find Django satisfying. It wasn’t cathartic, even when it was telling me that’s how I should be feeling, and I left the theater struggling to articulate why. [Warning: spoiler alerts upcoming…]