Review of 12 Years a Slave (2013) by Splash R — 05 Aug 2014

Here we have the winner of the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture, a film that's based on an autobiography written before the USA Civil War that truly speaks about a strong, important and delicate subject with realism: USA slavery.

Solomon Northup is a free African-American violinist with a wife and two kids. One day, two men offer him a job in Washington D.C., Northup agrees but once they arrive the two men drug him and he wakes up in a slave pen about to be sold into slavery. The film follows Northup in his 12 years as a slave with different kinds of masters and bearing all kinds of atrocities but never losing hope to see again his family.

With such a delicate and strong premise, this film needed a strong script, directing and performances in order to succeed as an artistic picture and fortunately has them. The first thing that needs to be call out is the outstanding acting by every single actor with the three nominated actors stealing the show: Ejiofor is just amazing in the leading role, Fassbender is perfectly intimidating in his role and Nyong´o is just heartbreaking in her well deserved Academy Award winning role. But not only this film has amazing acting, it counts with a bold direction by Steve McQueen which give us long and hard to watch punishment sequences, striking visuals and the real misery the slaves endure enhance by the phenomenal acting; it has an amazing adapted screenplay that does the source material the justice it deserves, the story, most likely, gets some sentiments from the audience without using cheap ways to get some tears out of you, beautiful locations and a well done pre Civil War atmosphere.

A deserved winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, a film that will hook you and will make you cheer and/or cry by the time the credits roll thanks to its direction, script and spectacular performances but is not a comfortable experience. Undeniably this film will continue to be talk about in the future, a potential new classic.