As high as cinema can go

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2014)

It's rare that a movie lives up to its hype, even rarer that the hype is transcended by the actual achievement. 12 YEARS A SLAVE does both. Aided by powerful performances and cinematography, director McQueen exposes the barbarity of dehumanisation, of treating people as property. Reviews focus on the brutality on display, and it's true that the film is not easy to watch, with its powerful juxtaposition of sublime scenery and human degradation. But to me the final scene is the most powerful of all: we are party to the kind of raw emotion that in the hands of lesser artists could easily descend into tawdriness or sentimentality. Here, as in the rest of the film, it is raised up high, as high as cinematic art can go.