I watched 12 years a slave in English
class, little over a week ago. The movie is based on a true story. A free black
man gets kidnapped and spend his next 12 years as a slave.
Solomon
Northup, who the movie is about, lived a nice life in upstate New York, before
he was tricked by two circus freaks to come with them to play violin on one of
their shows. Northup agrees to come with them. He gets drunk and kidnapped by
the circus freaks. When he wakes up he finds his been imprisoned. He tries to
tell the warden, that there has been made a mistake. For that he gets lashed.
The movie is very violent. There is a lot of
beating, sexual harassment, foul language, racism and gender discrimination.
I
personally thought the movie seemed long. There were many, long scenes, where
people were beaten, hung, assaulted etc. There were also many dark scenes, so
at times it was hard to see the actors. Not just because most of them were
black, but because of the lack of lighting in the scenes. The story started of
good, but I feel as if the director dragged the story out, just to have a movie
passed two hours, so for me this movie was not a hit.
This is my opinion. Long and maybe a bit
boring, but strong and memorable.
