If you ever feel like seeing a good movie, learning some history about our nation and being on the verge of crying for two and a half hours, then you should consider going to see Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave.
The movie, based off of actual events, is about the harrowing adventure of Solomon Northup, a free black man from pre-Civil War New York. After being duped by two rich men Solomon gets sold into slavery and the audience watches as Solomon is beaten and abused by three different plantation owners, forced to watch other slaves disappear, get beaten, or killed and crushed by his vain attempts to escape back to his life in New York.
The movie starts off rather slowly, showing Solomon in his home with his two children and wife and it takes about 20 minutes before Solomon is tricked and brutally forced into slavery. Once the story picks up my heart couldn’t stop pounding. The film, rated R for violent and cruel content, as well as some nudity and sexuality, is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It shows brutal and graphic violence, but this done on purpose. In the past, Hollywood has often left the most brutal aspects of slavery to the imagination. The brutality was done intentionally to make it feel as though viewers “actually experience slavery as if [they’d] gone through it,” McQueen said during a Q&A at the premiere of his movie.
All in all, the movie is incredibly well done. The actor’s perform convincingly in their roles as slaves, slave masters, and plantation owners. During the entire thing I actually felt like I was seeing the life of a slave play out in front of my eyes. There were times that I wanted to look away, but I was too captivated to take my eyes off the screen. It is shocking. Nothing is sugar-coated. Absolutely nothing is left to the imagination by the end of the movie and that is precisely the point. The movie spits in the face of political correctness which is a refreshing change from the over politically correct films that have been so commonplace in Hollywood lately. This movie is slavery staring you in the face and daring you to look away.
At times I felt like the movie was almost too real, but it really put the brutal, ugly life of slavery into perspective for me, and seeing how far we’ve come since then makes me truly proud to be an American.
