I watched 12 Years a Slave. Its a little unusual to a Hollywood movie without special effects, just drama and art of cinema. And thats great generally and the must for the story. My mistake was that I expected the movie to be over-dramatized and really difficult to watch. But in fact this is a story of a kinda lucky man, and you also know from the title something he doesnt know: it all ends well for him. For me as a Jew from Russia living in the Middle East, all the terrible physical manifestations of slavery, as they shown, doesnt look shocking at all: compared to Nazi camps and Gulag, slave trade and labor seems to be warm and respectful; beating, abuse and executions is quite humane, if you compare it to tortures and genocides under totalitarian regimes in XX, or to ongoing religious and tribal massacres in Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya... And the conditions of slave life is five star hotel to Leningrad under siege, camps in Darfur, Jewish ghettos, Stalins camps or camps for Soviet POW in Nazi Germany. But the movie is probably not about that. Its about how dividing people to slaves and masters is mutilating the souls of both and wake up worst monsters even in best people. Its about terrible choices between dignity and survival, between hope for freedom and fear for life, empathy and your own pain, about remaining a human when its best for you to become a cattle, about how laws and holy scriptures can be used to justify most terrible crimes against Human as Image of G-d, about connections between unethical inclinations of a man. Of course, kudos to America for not forgetting and continuously reflecting on the darkest spots in their history, something not so obvious in most places in the world.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 22:45:11 +0000