Such A Story Of Substance, But Not In This Movie.

Rating: 3/10 (25 March 2014)

For a story with such substance, this movie is quite shallow. The first time we see Solomon, he's already enslaved. He has three {or four?} inconsequential flashbacks to his freedom, his family, whom we don't even get to know, and his violin playing, and that's it. They're there to give us facts, that's it. No relationship with him is formed, and the abduction comes out of no where, leaving us at a loss of a reason to really care about him. We care because he's a slave, but he's not going through anything any of the others aren't, so what sets him apart? What makes him our hero? He's not. The dialogue and setup of the scenes were stilted and overly dramatic emotional bombardments of points, not a nuanced unfolding that we can settle into and care about. You are not immersed, but instead simply watching. And cringing.
Such as the language. Now granted, that is the way people talked back then, all perfect grammar and formal wording and stiff. But I'm sure you would not speak perfect and formal in every situation, especially very stressful ones. Throughout there was a stiffness and, dare I say, a falseness to what you're watching for that reason. It wasn't relaxed. When Solomon is talking to whatshername, the crying mother slave who was once free like him, the dialogue was pissing me off. It was acted too stageplay-ish and see through. I saw that scene online before in the movie, and hoped the whole movie was not like that, but given today's film making, I was a fool to. It was. Sometimes over acting in that way is good for a movie like "Dog Day Afternoon" or "Inherit The Wind," but here it took you out of the scene. Slaves did not speak like that, even if they were once free like Solomon was, tone it the hell down.
The whites were all the same. Viscous, mean and not normal. Nothing slows down. At least until Brad Pitt, of course.
Then there are details that were greatly needed, like what did his family do when he was gone? Did they investigate? Did others look for him? Did they encounter other families who were going through the same thing? And when Solomon finally has a way {after 12 years?} of getting a letter, a letter, mind you, to a friend in New York, via white, zombie slaying savior Brad Pitt, what were the goings on of that? How did it happen? How long? We are not given a full scale picture of what was a very large scale real event. It's choppy and narrow. Solomon became active in freeing slaves but we are only told that through writing on the screen after the end.
Lastly the meeting up again with his family was truly weird. He is taken to a house where they {his wife, kids, son in law and new grandson} are standing. Standing. When he enters there is no bum rush into each other. No shouts of I love you or thank God you're home or we missed you so much. No crying and going crazy as normal people would. Instead they just stand there before him like he's a stranger. He tells them to "Forgive" his appearance {gray hair}. After his daughter introduces her husband and newborn to him, his bitch of a wife finally decides it might be good time to approach him now. He says forgive me, which was heartbreaking. She says "there's nothing to forgive" which was true, but you gotta see the scene to believe it. There's no way that really happened like that.
Also it got creepy when for one minute and a half Solomon looks at the scenery around him and then stares into he camera, at us. In the eye. I looked away and wanted it to stop. The violence didn't give me that reaction. This is unbelievable poor storytelling and not even the brief shot of naked man wang can save it. The directing, lighting, acting {aside from the content}, costumes and sets, landscape, music, and atmosphere are all spot on and great to look at. Now only if the narrative could be overhauled to match. It had the same air as other black films like "The Butler" and "Precious," constant point making with nothing else to grasp.