12 Years a Slave review

The Academy Award-winning Best Picture 12 Years a Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northrup, a free black man who was kidnapped in 1841 during a trip to Washington. He was sold to people who used him for hard labor. During that time, he had to hide the fact that he could read and write, because slaves who were thought to be “uppity” or who considered themselves “better” than their masters, were killed. As it was, Solomon endured many indignities, including torture and beatings during the time he was a slave. He also had to stand by helplessly as female slaves were raped and beaten bloody.

Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays Solomon as an educated and kind gentleman who unfortunately, trusts the wrong people and is sold wrongly into slavery. Despite this, Solomon retains his dignity and humanity, and Ejiofor portrays Solomon in a way that gives great detail to the emotional turmoil he endured. We read Solomon’s pain and suffering clearly on Ejiofor’s face. His work in the film makes it the quality piece of work that audiences have raved about – though the story is horrifying and shocking, it’s Ejiofor who carries us through with strength and courage.

This is not a film that is easy to watch. At the beginning, Solomon is a middle class man with a beautiful home, a wife he’s deeply in love with and well-dressed, well-behaved children. He’s a talented violinist who earns money playing. To watch his confusion as he’s thrown into a slave pen, chained and tortured is shocking. Although we know, because this is based on a true story, that his time as a slave will eventually come to an end, it doesn’t lessen the horror of watching what he has to endure and witness.

The travails of the much-abused slave Patsey, played by Lupita Nyong’o, who won an Academy Award for her work in the film, will haunt you long after the movie is over. Still, this is a movie not to be missed. The beautiful countryside of the American South is gorgeously filmed in stark contrast to the cruelty and suffering that went on there. There are still many people who live as slaves in the world, and this film shows us why, in case anyone was in doubt, this is an evil that all people should speak out against.

The Blu-ray offers a featurette called A Historical Portrait. As well as going behind the scenes of the making of the movie, we are treated to Ejiofor reading from Solomon Northrup’s autobiography, Twelve Years a Slave. It’s somehow chilling to hear Solomon’s own words describing what we’ve just seen on the screen in the movie and it makes what we’ve just witnessed all the more real. In a strange twist, relating to last year’s Best Picture Academy Award nominee, Lincoln, it made me thankful all over again for the U.S. President who managed to put through the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing 3.1 million slaves. Read more about Solomon Northrup by clicking here.

Other movies coming out for home release today include: The Grandmaster, Philomena and Oldboy. ~Alexandra Heilbron