Quentin Tarantino is known for shocking us with his inventive ways of killing off characters. Django Unchained was no exception... We find D'Artagnan up a tree, surrounded by men with guns and dogs trained on him after a failed attempt to escape from Calvin Candie's creepily-named Candyland. D'Artagnan seems less well-built than the other Mandingos we have seen, and is at his breaking point, unable to mentally handle the brutal existence inflicted upon him. Candie approaches D'Artagnan and explains to him that he is merely an investment, and he cannot be freed until he has turned a profit for his master. As soon as Candie realises that the man is completely demoralised, he turns from speaking kindly to him to ordering the dogs upon him. We then see the dogs set upon D'Artagnan as the travelling group of slaves, Dr. Schultz and Django watch on. The slowed sounds of the dogs barking adds an eerie and inevitable quality to the scene: we know exactly what is coming next. The white men whoop and holler as they rush after the dogs for a front row seat of the attack, and we hear the horrible screams of D'Artagnan as the dogs tear him to pieces. In keeping with classic Tarantino style, we don't actually see the graphic violence taking place (such as the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs) and it's left to our imaginations to fill in the gaps - and what you cannot see is always worse than what you can. As well as the death being shocking from a cinematic point of view, the realisation that this act was not uncommon in the slavery era of America's Deep South makes it even worse. It's quite sickening to think that human beings can act in this way towards each other, which makes it easily one of the most disturbing and shocking deaths of 2013.
