12 Years a Slave

I sort of see parallels with today’s society in this and not an anti-racist fairytale with a happy ending, which they obviously seemed to want. McQueen has disappointed me for the first time, probably because he couldn’t be sufficiently detached from the topic and he forgot to spice it up with something. These torturous 12 years seem fairly relaxed and Platt doesn’t experience proper slavery until he’s with Fassbender, who is cutely eccentric and interprets the Word of the Lord in his own special way. And eventually he alone really deals out punishment. Chiwetel Ejiofor (how the heck do you pronounce that?) acts well, but he honestly doesn’t have that much to do and the nomination for an Oscar is a little bizarre. The concept of time passing was poorly intimated, it’s hard to tell how long he was where and if it wasn’t for the title and the granddaughter, it could have easily been like four years. Lifelessly filmed and if it weren’t for Fassbender, I just don’t know. Nothing exceptional, but it’s watchable. P.S.: Hans Zimmer sometimes shines, but the music is mostly pretty ordinary and the gospel overkill is just awful. I said dance! Come on! Get goin’, Platt! (24/01/2014)

A film with a strong theme, but unfortunately nothing for me. The acting is very good, Michael Fassbender, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o give solid performances. Unfortunately, even though the film has a strong story it ends exactly as you expect. It's funny that the supposed 12 years in the film feel less than a week, one would think that much more happened in those 12 years than the film presents. But I didn't care much for the characters, the emotions left me cold and it has a very slow pace that drags on perhaps even more than the main character's 12 years. That blacks were slaves and had it tough back then everyone knows, but I don't know why I would watch a two hour movie about it. 5/10. (18/02/2021)

I took the time to read a little more about the whole Solomon Northup thing. Right up to the moment when he is freed from slavery, it is a wonderful account of the American South before the Civil War. But why does the film end here? Because what happened later and how much information there is about it would not be as clear. It is no coincidence, after all, that the memoirs helped Northup write and publish it just a year after "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published. None of those involved in his abduction were punished. Northup himself disappears very soon after a brief tour to promote his cause and book. Given the kind of manifesto the film version of 12 Years a Slave was meant to be, it raises more questions, and it's not just about the pious parallel with today. Why all the acting orgies by Fassbender, Paulson, or Pitt? Nyong'o is only acting in the MCU these days anyway, so I'm not really feeling all that good about it. (30/01/2019)

The film is shot decently, with exceptional care, and it can be seen that if not the director himself, then the producer was definitely counting on a festival award - after all, the subject matter is the sort where the creators claim a film award in advance. However, my 4 stars are rather meant as my appreciation of the formal qualities rather than an expression of emotional solidarity with the film. It has a strong story and theme, and yet I watched a film that didn't touch me emotionally in any way, and what's more, it didn't surprise me at all. It has exactly what one would expect, and while Hunger from the workshop of Steve McQueen, which is rated worse on FilmBooster, got under my skin and made me think about the film and come back to it in memories, in the case of 12 Years a Slave, I feel like I just ticked off having seen it. Overall impression: 70%. Sometimes the term film academism appears in film comments - I would say that it fits quite well with this film. (25/12/2015)

I was afraid of self-poignant historical frescoes about a cohesive black community and ugly southern slaveholders, but I got a surprisingly bright and complex story of a man who will perhaps too quickly acquire a forced identity and live his 12 years not in chains, but in separation (from his family, but also from the "community" of Negro slaves). Like Tarantino a year ago, McQueen ticks off too-simple boxes and pleasing catharsis. Although the screenplay sometimes casts unnecessarily large words under his feet, but the narrative through images, the emphasis on ambiguous "looking" into the face of the protagonist and his companions, and the inner stratification of individual Lords keep him close to his central theme - lack of freedom, which is not the result of specific enslavement, but rather existence itself. In the end, we can come to the surprising discovery that more than anything, 12 Years a Slave is a film about the acceptance of someone else's identity and the traumatic loss of oneself. Hence the often mentioned passivity of the main character, which is in fact an essential part of his choice to survive even through the greatest compromises. More like Frantz Fanon than Steven Spielberg, the film is masterful and strong in the best moments, despite its imbalance. In the others, perhaps safely approaching conventions, it is still at least fascinating and worth thinking about. [85%] (10/01/2014)