2 hours of sadism

Rating: 2/10 (24 November 2013)

I was hoping to really enjoy "12 Years a Slave" but wasn't expecting a 2 hr long movie of very long, ponderous slow camera shots of nature and hardly any compelling dialog or character development. This was then broken up seemingly every 10 minutes by a savage flogging or a vicious rape or some other sadistic cruelty being inflicted on the movie's hero, the hapless Solomon a freeman sold into slavery, and the other slaves. Except for Brad Pitt's Canadian abolitionist and a gentleman from Solomon's home town, virtually every white character in this movie is portrayed as the very embodiment of evil. No nuance, nothing but unremitting sadism.
A lot of people seem to be comparing this movie to "Schindler's List" although I can't understand why. In "List" you had the compelling story of Schindler who, for reasons known only to himself, risks his life to save as many Jews as he can. The Jewish prisoners are depicted as full characters, people you know and care about. Even the Nazi played by Ralph Finnes is given some depth, a man whose cruelty has been unleashed and sanctioned by his Nazi bosses but, you suspect but for the war would be a man who might be interesting to be around---a lover of fine food, good wine and a roving eye for the women. But the slave masters in "12 Years a Slave" don't have the slightest hint of anything human about them, just treating people with cruelty for cruelty's sake.
If filmmakers really wanted to make a powerful movie about slavery, they might consider boldly making a new version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and hew closely to the story that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote. It's a powerful book and it gets far deeper into the immorality of slavery than anything like "12 Years a Slave" does. The memoirs that "12" was based on came out soon after the huge success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin". The opening scene of the slave-traders benignly discussing their "wares" in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so chilling to read that I couldn't even bear to read it through in one sitting. "12" had a similar scene with the excellent Paul Giamatti as a slave-trader, but the movie never got any deeper.