12 Years a Slave is a great and terrifying film. It is based on one of the rare slave chronicles of the 19th Century. Unlike Greek and Roman slaveholders, American slavers forbade their slaves from learning how to read and write, out of fear of conspiracy and uprising. As the title implies, this slave was literate and escaped his servitude. Shot in close-up and extreme close-up, the film is an unsparing look at the mechanics of American slavery - as brutal as the Nazi Holocaust only monetized. The tiptoe scene, in its nuance and its acceptance, is the most astonishing summary of plantation life I have ever seen. And Benedict Cumberbatch, the Good Slaver, captures how much of its soul America lost in the trafficking of human beings. The lead actors are mostly British - Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender, and, above all, Chiwetel Ejiofor, as the author. England, whose economy was not as dependent on slave goods as Americas, abolished slavery early, but that does not mean abolition was easy. William Wilberforce, the English abolitionist, said in 1791 on the floor of the House of Commons, You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know. That declaration and the scarifying words of Lincolns Second Inaugural are what you will take away from this movie: Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-men’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:53:00 +0000
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