130 + minutes a slave...

Rating: 4/10 (17 November 2013)

Whew--I'm sooooo relieved to know that most of the real evils of the Antebellum South can be mostly laid at the feet of evil white women, who are either blind or insanely jealous. And of course it's a relief to know that there were some upright and well-meaning white male plantation owners--isn't it? Even if they did tend to hand out fiddles and keep the shotguns for themselves... Sigh. In a sentence? This movie is long and painful, in more ways than one. Of course it had to be made--and the fact that it needed to wait until 2013 to GET made is a horrific indictment of this country--but we don't have to pretend it's well made. This is an obvious mess, as heavy-handed as...naaah, I won't say it. The characters are each less than one and a half inches deep and Chiwetel Ejiofor is (I hope) going to win an Oscar for breathing through his mouth and looking unhappy and bewildered for over two hours. Much of the film feels like an homage to Quentin Tarentino (and as Django was itself an homage this is a quote of a quote...). I know people PC enough to have sat through it twice--and I know people who ought to be made to watch it more times than that (though, frankly, it might just come to have a numbing effect). It would have made a perfect PBS special. See it, or see part of it, or at least buy a ticket--and read the book, which is of some real historical importance, as is the story itself.