A film that troubles me greatly for all the wrong reasons....

Rating: 6/10 (17 January 2014)

There is much to like about McQueens film, an amazingly talented film maker if ever there was one. Some people hated 'Shame', I thought it was amazingly brave and so relevant to the world today. The story of 12 Years a Slave is well known so I won't regurgitate it here or debate the veracity of the truth of the details. I am sure the story is true and almost certainly even worse than we got to see on screen.
The performances are all first rate with the plaudits going to newcomer Lupita Nyong'o who plays another fellow slave in a truly awful position of the subject of desire and torment which she must endure almost daily. Chiwetel Ejiofor anchors the whole piece nicely and Michael Fassbender and Sarah Poulson epitomise total evil as the last white slavers that host our protagonists life. The camera-work is beautiful and haunting at the same time, lingering as it often does on nature and light to set the tone and mood. The films display of brutality that slaves went through in the American South is relentless. This is 'Roots', with all the gore and its totally uncompromising in its delivery. I've heard the critical view that the whites here are too one dimensional. Some are kind slavers, but still slavers none the less, while others are just the worst people alive with Brad Pitts cameo being the only decent person among them. I can't argue with this depiction as unfair, because I am sure its not, the focus is after all on the Cotton Farms which were not a nice place to live and grow up. The film ticks all the boxes and will win lots of awards and I am sure will get rave after rave review. I am something of an connoisseur of the true story drama, I must have over 200 in my DVD collection. I think they're the heart and soul of what makes great cinema, real stories about real people that should tackle real issues and give a real response of emotion form the audience. It is what make films such as these rank as master pieces alongside Star Wars and The Godfather. It should rank as one of my favourites in this genre, up there with Schindlers List, The Murder Of Stephen Lawrence, Wall Of Silence, Hillsborough and so on. So why didn't I like this film? Films such as these are not films you can always enjoy watching, their an experience to digest, sometimes not easily and that's fine I can still digest such a film and say its a good film, and it is, its an outstanding piece of cinema in many respects and its the job of the film maker to challenge, educate, shock and teach us. This film does all of these things. Now I personally didn't learn too much that was new about the American south as I am well educated and while I wasn't familiar with Northup's personal story I was fully aware of what went on and have digested a great deal of other work on this subject. Though I don't live in America I have been there many times and I am acutely aware of the great racial divide that still exists between the communities over there and its primarily because of this great history of slave culture that they have that such division which was never as strong in the UK. While I applaud any film that tackles such a tough subject and seeks to expose it for all it was, I found here that this film felt a little too late. When Mississippi Burning was released in the late 1980's its release was marred by a number of outbursts of violence in cinemas across America. These were caused by reactions to the film, by the reality of the racism in the south of the 60s being exposed for the younger 80s generation, and so this film does the same on a topic that has been covered extensively before but rarely with such gore and brutality. It felt at times to me I was almost watching horror porn but in different genre and while one can rightly say this is realistic and we should see it, I fear for the divide that this will continue to cause among the communities in the USA. A recent visit there has only confirmed for me how little has changed and how little the black and white communities, on the East Coast especially interact with each other and how racial tensions run higher than ever before. I feel certain this film will do nothing but add to those tensions and that is what truly disturbs me more than the film itself. I see no hope offered in the film to bridge our communities and our races in a film of this type and while the film is an amazing work I think the wider implications of it should be considered. There is this great personal story sure, and on that level its an amazing and draining experience but in a wider a context I fear for the reaction it might cause and the attitudes it will only seek to exacerbate. I wish this film had been made at the same time as Cry Freedom, when I feel it was the time to ram these messages home but now it feels like its rammed down my throat and at the wrong time when the world really does need to unite as a people and not divide. This will be a controversial view I know, yes Slavery was bloody awful, people associated with it were evil, I think we all know this already, but just in case you don't here is a film that will really upset about the subject. After viewing it, where will you direct that anger? See it and decide for yourself.