Pretty good but mediocre directorship in some scenes

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2014)

Better than most of the movies I've seen lately and the acting was superb from just about everyone. When big names like Brad Pitt and Paul Giamatti give you some of their best stuff, even though they're in minor parts, you know you're watching something good. It's hard to get your head around the fact that this is pretty recent history and it's still an open sore in America. The acceptance by the majority of white society at the time, of the concept of ownership of a human being , is something that still mystifies me. Mind you if you watch a few episodes of Downton Abbey and see how the staff were treated even up to the 1940s you will get a good idea where it came from. Can you believe that a Naval Architect from Liverpool was given an award for a design that allowed for more slaves to be jammed in at the prow of a slave ship? But I digress. This is raw and emotional stuff and it hits you right in the solar plexus. With that in mind, you don't really need to linger with shots of extreme anguish such as the scene with the rope, or the close up of Solomon Northup's despairing face. It's only a minor flaw but you would think that somebody would have whispered in the director's ear that these key scenes could have been shortened for more effect.
To say you enjoyed a movie like this doesn't seem right but there's redemption in the thought that those days are behind us in North America (only to be replaced by wage slavery in many cases.) It's important to remember too that real slavery still exists in many other countries and we shouldn't get too smug when we point out the shortcomings of other nations... we've still got a big bill to pay!