Nominated for a slew of Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture, eccentric director Quentin Tarantino's newest creation, Django Unchained, has been rattling viewers since premiering in December. This action-packed historically-inspired drama follows a miraculously freed slave, Django (Jamie Foxx), just before the onset of the Civil War, on his journey to becoming both a hero and a vigilante as he is taken under the wing of a peculiar bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). While Django has a very focused plot and defined characters, the subject matter within the film opens the door to a forceful but relevant conversation about injustice and race relations in the antebellum south.

The film begins with a journey montage of half a dozen men chained together at their ankles, the metal cuffs cutting into their skin, trudging through the sweltering desert, led by two slavers riding on horseback. Even this rather passive opening scene represents the cruelty of slavery-perhaps most noticeable was that of the risen, tender pink scars from beating on the strong men's backs.

The roughness of this first shot is immediately countered by the film's quirky theme song and opening titles sequence. The blaring music is upbeat, twangy and sounds like it should have been the theme for a spaghetti Western; the titles are presented in a blocky, bright red font that looks like it belongs in a campy horror franchise. This sets a precedent for the remainder of Django: a presentation of serious subjects immediately accompanied by quirky elements of relief.

In this first scene, Dr. King Schultz accosts the chained men, one of whom is Django, during the middle of the night, and after some witty banter, kills their owners and happily tosses the slaves the key to their chains. Schultz explains to Django that he is a bounty hunter (disguised as a dentist) who is hunting down three overseers from the plantation he was just sold from. The squirrelly man makes a deal with Django: if he agrees to come along to identify the men, Schultz will grant him his freedom, some pocket money and teach him the ways of bounty hunting. For Django, this is a shot at acquiring the means to buy the freedom of his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who he was just separated from by sale. The deal is perfect. But Django has no idea what he is getting himself into. 

While the plot of the film is no less than fascinating, and the two-and-a-half-or-so hours I spent glued to my theater seat passed without a single check of the time, the politically-charged vignettes sprinkled throughout the plot line were, at times, a bit of a distraction. A scene that I had a problem with occurred when Django and Schultz were making their way across a prairie after their first bounty together. The owner of the plantation on which they killed the wanted overseers had gathered a crowd of men and were pursuing the pair on horseback. The plantation owner had not merely gathered men, though; he had assembled an army of fellow Ku Klux Klansmen.

The scene focused on the group of angry pursuers while Django and Schultz scaled a tree to hide. The Klansmen were all wearing the characteristic white pointed hat with eye-holes cut out, and one man pipes up with some comment to the effect of: "Gee, Smith's wife sure did a sh*tty job with these here eye holes. I can't see nothin' outta this!" The rest of the crowd groans and moans in agreement, tearing at their masks and squinting comically, slinging insults at unfortunate Mrs. Smith and her poor sewing skills. Mr. Smith soon retaliates, standing up for his wife and riding off in a huff. The rest of the men shrug, rip at their hats some more and nonchalantly debate whether to even wear them.

My problem with this scene is that it makes the Klansmen seem relatable and personable. This is only one of many cases of Tarantino's use of comedy to relieve tension in a dense historical scene progressing towards tactlessness. In a movie whose climax is the bloody victory of a former slave over his cruel oppressors, giving any sense of humanity to a white supremacy group is quite crass.

Despite the qualms I had with moments of contrast between seriousness and lightheartedness in the film, Django is an absolute must-see. The star-studded cast delivered consistently flooring performances throughout, including an amazing show by Leonardo DiCaprio in a supporting role as a deranged villain.

The plot twists eventually find Django posing as a slave-owner, spurring a conversation about the horror that the racism of the antebellum south allowed. It kept me thinking about the film's message long after leaving the theater, and the entire adventure comes down to one idea: how much is freedom worth to you?