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    12 Years a Slave

    Reviewed by
    jerster82@

    12 Years A Slave is the movie about slavery that Hollywood has been too afraid to make. It contains not one once of sentimentality, nor does it pull any punches detailing the 12 years spent in captivity of Solomon Northup, a free man, kidnapped, enslaved and subjected to unspeakable cruelty. Director Steve McQueen has created a haunting and poignant examination of 1840's America here and refuses to infuse his film with any soft serve, rose-colored nonsense that you'd find in films like The Help or The Butler. In fact, when juxtaposed against one another, those films seem to be from a different universe altogether and represent aspects of slavery and the civil rights movement as told by people unwilling to upset or offend anyone's delicate sensibilities. You'll find no such timidness with McQueen's film. It is brutal, it is unflinching, but above all, it is honest. Honest about the horrors that befell slaves and honest about a period in its history that America would like to pretend never happened. Good luck with that America, because this film has been burned into my mind and will do the same with any viewer that can make it to the end, many in my theatre did not. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup is heartbreaking and emotionally exhausting, in a role of such intensity, it's a wonder he was able to sustain it. However, it is Michael Fassbender as a slave owner that channels evil incarnate, creating such a monstrous, unfeeling brute, that audiences will be watching many of his scenes through their fingers, hands over their eyes. A marvel of a film, with Oscar nods aplenty in its future. Although sadly, I just can't see a film this controversial winning Best Picture. For like a lot of the patrons who walked out, the Academy simply isn't ready.

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    jerster82@  4.11.2013 age: 26-35 438 reviews

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