On the couch

They’ve got Lenin’s brain pickled somewhere in the Kremlin.

When the father of communism died, they took out his brain, sliced it like corn beef, pickled it and preserved it between sheets of glass so future generations could study his genius. If you shone a torch through one of those wafer-thin slices, the shadow on the wall would probably be a hammer and sickle.

If we did the same thing with Quentin Tarantino’s grey matter, the image might just be Django Unchained.

Unmistakeably the product of the filmmaker’s genre-soused brain, his tribute to westerns is fascinating, funny and not for the faint-hearted, despite lacking the immediately quotable moments of Pulp Fiction or the intricate cool of Jackie Brown.

What it doesn’t feel like is an exercise in novelty cool, a la Kill Bill, using a solid and intriguing (if slightly implausible) story as the foundation for some fantastic performances and occasionally outrageously violent set-pieces.

Jamie Foxx stars as the titular Django, a slave unchained by one Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) a bounty hunter in search of the Brittle Brothers for the reward on their heads. Having been on the business end of their whips, Django can point the brothers out to the good doctor and allow him to complete his bit of business.

In exchange for his help in claiming the Brittle and other bounties, Shultz agrees to help Django find his wife, Broomhilde (Kerry Washington), from who he was separated when the two tried to flee their former owner.

The search leads them eventually to the estate of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), an obscenely wealthy plantation owner who specialises in forcing his slaves to fight each other to the death.

As can be expected, the path of true love and spousal reclaimation seldom runs smooth and Django and Schultz find themselves pitting their wits against not only Candie but his wily and staunchly loyal senior house slave Stephen (Samuel L Jackson), as a complicated con takes a bloody turn.

As with all of QT’s films, the focus in Django is as much on the moments between the moments as it is on the broader plot points. A lot of time is spent on the impeccably mannered Dr Shultz negotiating for Django’s freedom. The same can be said for the newly freed man picking his first set of clothes. Whatever else can be said about the man, Tarantino is a masterful screenwriter. He seems to have grown beyond the indulgence of needing show-off speeches to make sure the audience is aware of his pop-culture credentials and his characters are now memorable for more than just a speech (“Ezikiel 25:17…”, for example).

In a role initially written for Will Smith, Jamie Foxx is a brilliant lead. Intense, intelligent and impossibly cool, he’s so brilliant, in fact, that the idea of the Fresh Prince filling the spot seems inappropriate now.

Foxx isn’t the only one to turn heads though, as Christoph Waltz takes to the far end of the evil spectrum as the genial Dr Shultz. Classy and streetwise, the only thing he and his Inglorious Basterds character have in common is a steely resolve and somewhat merciless streak.

Matching the pair for on-screen rapport are DiCaprio and Jackson as Candie and Stephen. Constantly teetering on the edge of some massive violence or cruelty, Candie is a fantastic villain, matched only by the miserable old coot that is Stephen. Jackson brings an improbable menace to a character that could have come across as comic relief and little else. Imagine Bird in The Field only smart and with power.

Kerry Washington is little more than a damsel in distress as Broomhilde – a pity given how good she is in TV show Scandal – and there are a host of other cameos, including Don Johnson, Michael Parks and Jonah Hill.

Django Unchained won’t be to everyone’s taste, but then none of Tarantino’s films are. If, however, you have anything close to an affection for films in general or westerns, in particular, this latest offering from the world’s biggest film nerd is a must.

Plus, if he follows through with his plan for retirement, it may be one of the last times you get to see something quite like it.