Fantastic Film

Rating: 9/10 (9 January 2014)

The title of the movie summarizes the story; I only can add violin player, Solomon Northup, is a freeman but being kidnapped and sold to slavery. So the story is very clear how it's going to be and automatically audience should expect some torture scenes, and in my opinion director Steve McQueen does a great job showing them on screen. Although, these scenes aren't sadly painful for me to watch due the violence in movies in the past few years, but what personally destroys me the most and difficult to watch is the fact someone is being tortured or being in a very difficult situation and others are careless or incapable or even coward to offer a small simple help – in my opinion, when something like that happens there's a massive problem in that society. This film most likely is slow for some audiences, I think it's only a few minutes longer than 2 hours, but I remember after the movies was done, in theater some people were saying "gosh it was long." Let me tell you this, you shouldn't expect every shot or scene to move the story forward, they are there to capture the feeling of that environment and the emotions of the characters. Again, Steve McQueen does such solid job on showing them on screen, a good example of it is when a difficult scene occurs next to a pig farm, and you see how a human is being valued less than them. That also brings me to praise the cinematographer, Sean Bobbit, because he's done an astonishing job here, absolutely beautiful images and they're so well framed (especially those long shots), and also so well colorized, which I personally love it a lot- I love it when a dark theme story like this has a lot of colorful images on screen. Another element that Steve McQueen has done perfectly is the cast, this is the best ensemble on screen that I've seen, everyone brings wonderful performances, no one disappoints at all, and indeed Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves an Oscar nomination. Also about Michael Fassbender, the guy is just a fantastic actor and his performance here is flawless, but I'd like to talk about his character. I assume people who have seen the trailer automatically expect a brutal, menacing character, but I don't see him that way at all. I see Edwin Epps a weak person who is being controlled by his wife, I see a fool who has a power and extremely abuses it. Sarah Paulson as Mistress Epps is wonderful and surprising in this role, she's the cold person with no mercy, she's the menacing person, and honestly she's the true master of that plantation. Regarding the soundtrack, Hans Zimmer does a decent job here; I personally feel the score is the renovations of a track he did for Inception, "Time," which I personally have no problem with it, some might get disappointed, but I think it fits the theme.
I highly recommend this to everyone, especially teenagers who avoid learning anything about history and their past. I find it sad that American critics are not happy that a British director made this film, I think they should be unhappy about that their country is attempting to avoid their dark and brutal history that didn't happen not too far ago and accusing other nations for being uncivilized – in my opinion, if the holocaust wouldn't have happened, the slavery and the segregation in this country would have been the worst event in the history of the past couple ages. Anyway, I give this 9/10.