November 3-10, 2013
12 Years a Slave | Steve McQueen | 2013 | ★★★
With 12 Years a Slave tried something with the topic of slaver that almost no film on the topic has ever tried: to show how brutal it really was. This gives the film some memorable harrowing moments. However, it lacks something that Schindler’s List, a film this has been compared to many times before, had in spades: emotion. I imagine that the real Solomon Northup went through all sorts of emotions in his head or in private, but McQueen apparently had no time for this, and he only focused on how he acted in front of everyone else- as someone simply going through the motions, thereby making him a rather bland character. With that said, there are moments where emotion is finally allowed to come up to the surface, and these are moments where the film touches true greatness. There also moments where McQueen taps into the artfulness of his previous work that are aesthetically beautiful and haunting. However, these great moments don’t come to often in the entire running time. Add to that Hans Zimmer’s overbearing score and some distracting celebrity casting (Brad Pitt and Paul Giamatti distract, while Paul Dano kills any momentum the movie had) and what we are left with is a merely good film based on a tragedy that should have made for a better film.
While it didn’t do much for me, I’m still glad others are loving it and it’s making people have important conversations on the topic that are very much relevant today, and for that, I respect the work put into this a lot. Continue reading
A Journey Through Cinematic Heaven and Hell 