Review of 12 Years a Slave (2013) by Allen G — 01 Apr 2016

This film made me cry at the exact moment that I knew it was going to try and make me cry. You only ever pull that off if you know what you're doing. Well played, film. Well played.

Where to begin with this one? There's plenty to be skeptical about- a giant Oscar-net! another film about slavery because, hey, that's entertaining! A chance for the fancy actors to do all of the fancy acting!

Of course, all of those criticisms can be easily dismissed if the film is genuine. Now, that can be hard to define, especially when we're talking about something that consists solely of people pretending to be other people. So how then do I judge if a film is genuine? It's simple really- I don't. I watch it and if I'm drawn in, it has succeeded and if I'm not, well then, it can look forward to me badmouthing it on the internet somewhere.

It goes without saying that 12 Years A Slave completely drew me in. Not only that, but it had me from the get go and kept me for every second of its runtime. Through every scene, and every character, and every line, I was being affected by what I was being shown.

The performances are obviously key to this and there's so many to praise- Lupito Nyongo's stood out the most for me but Ejiofor is still tremendous and then you have Cumberbatch, Dano, and Fassbender just to completely confirm that Ridley and McQueen (and the casting director, I guess!) were absolutely not messing around with who they put in this film. Brad Pitt probably gets five minutes and, really, that seems about right.

The script is so finely-crafted however that I think it's the film's trump card. There are so many fantastically deep and convincing characters and their stories are so masterfully told in a way that is concise and yet somehow still completely generous to the complexities of each character.

I'm always skeptical when a Hollywood film about slavery comes along because there's always the very-real danger that it will turn out to be nothing but crass historical exploitation. Were you to describe many of the scenes in this film to me, before I'd seen it, I would likely have cried that 12 Years A Slave was an example of such exploitation.

However, that never felt like the case as I watched it. There was a purpose for every scene that related to furthering along the plot- to me, this became a film about the characters in the setting of slavery, as opposed to a film about slavery itself. To me, that made it all the more impactful as it successfully used these characters to make me think about what 12 years of slavery would really be like. I wasn't shown 12 years and left to stand cringing at all of the misfortune- I was deeply affected by it and that's what makes this film such a remarkable success.