Twelve years a slave, two hours of misery.
In fairness, if you go and see this film, you have been warned. The
movie is exactly what it says in the title, an examination of the twelve years
spent by free black man, Solomon Northrup, in slavery, after he was kidnapped
from his home in New England in the 1850s and
sold to traders in the South.
And so that is exactly what we get, a portrait of the violence,
degradation and
The evil and hatred of the white masters for their human property is
pure and relentless, and the deprivations that they inflict on the slaves seem
to have no end. Only Brad Pitt's character, an abolitionist originally from Canada but working in Georgia
It is not an easy watch. The only aspect of the film that gives the
viewer a break from the horror is the photography and camerawork, the shots of
the southern countryside are composed like paintings, and look exotic and
beautiful. It serves to contrast with the humiliation and violence that is the
lot of the American slave.
Yet the misery is so relentless, it has to be wondered what the point is
of this film. The message of the director seems to be that slavery is bad. But
don't we know this already? If we have seen Roots, or even Django Unchained,
from last year, surely we are aware that the life of a slave was no picnic.
For those people - if there are any out there - who still believe that
slavery just wasn't that bad, that it was somehow a benevolent system where
slaves' health was taken care of and their souls were saved, then certainly
they need to see this movie. It is a true story and so gains more resonance
from this fact. Yet beyond that, really only complete masochists (or sadists)
need to see this brutal, stomach churning film.
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