Embracing The Big Picture

Rating: 9/10 (6 March 2014)

Depicting slavery is definitely nothing new in cinema, but there has only been few that are as serious to the subject as 12 Years A Slave. Since the quality of this film is meant to win awards, it surprisingly takes a straighter direction. One might expect a large amount of schmaltz poured out the memoirs of Solomon Northup, but it turns out to be a tough message against the condition, making sure the suffering is the core while the emotional subplots are reserved to the side. 12 Years A Slave never had the will to distract the bad things happening on screen and that what makes it more than compelling.
At the first steps of Northup's struggle, you may think while traveling to their destination there would be minutes of breathing expressing their affliction as the score plays a very sad music. But that wasn't the priority, the exhaustion and misery continues as if they're completely doomed in their fate, even a plan for revenge is not worth trying. The journey is no preachy glam, it's all pain being flowed from one event to another. It examines these explicitly to make the audience realize that none of the treatment of slavery is accepted in any natural way. It still joins us to the characters' personal issues but in a brief way. It would have been a richer experience if it explores more of them, but that will probably ruin the film's thematic focus.
The craft is clearly a masterstroke. Plus the camera sure lingers at the most important points of each scene, and the music score is thankfully no excess for sentimentalism and leaves a big room that fits to the harsher moments, because it legitimately had to be desperate rather than overly dramatic. The stars are also a big landmark here and they've done a lot. Chiwetel Ejiofor credibly rolls with the punches of Northup's hard experiences. The behavior Michael Fassbender gives instantly reveals a hint of backstory to his character. Lupita Nyong'o naturally reflects to what her character has been through. And at the very short screen time of Benedict Cumberbatch and Brad Pitt surprisingly provide a strange dash of gravity.
Some might think the ending felt too rushed, or at least found the epilogue less than satisfying, but that is when you realize the real intentions of this movie. Suggestions for more development on the secondary characters could still be asked and it's quite reasonable, but when you see it closely, the real character development it keenly aims is slavery. The film remarkably pinpoints the subject like an arrow, and that is where it triumphs. Although to be warned, watching 12 Years A Slave is never easy, but again so was the context.