America's Primal Sin

This past weekend I went to go see "12 years a slave". It was a transformative experience to say the least. For a few days now I've been racking my brain to figure out what exactly I wanted to say about the film. There are so many levels to the film and and the subject matter itself, that I didn't know where to start. I simply want to state that it is my opinion that EVERYONE needs to see the film.

The movie is based on the 1853 memoir by the same name, written by a free black man named Solomon Northup. The story goes like this...Solomon was a free black musician living in New York when two white men; who offered themselves up as performers asked Solomon to accompany them to Washington DC for a paid performance. Once in D.C., they got him liquored up one night and when he awoke he was in chains and his free papers were gone. His name was changed to Platt and he was shipped to New Orleans to begin his life as a slave. As the title suggests, Solomon spends 12 years as a slave on a few plantations in New Orleans as he encounters various hardships, deceits, and cruelties. I'm guessing the normal nondescript life of a human being forced into slavery.

The beauty of the film is in the simplicity with which the story is executed. Director Steve McQueen understands the feeling the eyes can deliver to an audience. He understands how a wispy far off cry can convey a feeling of desperate despair. These things are integral when portraying such an undertaking, even if it was "just" for 12 years.

Chiwetel Ejiofor portrayed Solomon Northup as a proud, devoted family man of measure. A man who knew that he wanted to survive long enough to awake from his nightmare. Solomon knew that he had to keep his mind crisp and ready to act when the time came. Along with Eliofor's performance many stood out including Michael Fassbender as a deeply disturbed / alcoholic slave owner, and Lupita Nyong'o as an overachieving slave mired in deep despair. This movie isn't an all encompassing epic like "Roots". It doesn't have to be that. The movie leans on humanizing a moment in this country's past that is sometimes glossed over and overlooked. Even me, being an African American, I can even sometimes forget the atrocities that surely my ancestors lived thru. As I left the theatre that day, my heart seemed to beat a few beats slower than usual....I was showed things that I knew, but never felt.


-tshurn