Saw '12 Years a Slave'......

[FAST FRED]

......and found it worthy of all the Oscar nominations it's received.

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Best Picture, Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender), Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong'o), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design, and it should win some of those categories.

I thought it was very good movie making.

But, myself, I liked "Roots" better.

I submit that those 2 TV miniseries and the subsequent "Roots" TV movie, covered the subject of slavery more throughly and, IMO, even better.

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I realize that "Roots" in toto had a lot longer running time and that it covered a much more encompassing storyline.

So, it's probably not a completely fair comparison.

I thought the current film told the more circumscribed story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man kidnapped into slavery, very well.

I'm glad I saw it and I certainly recommend it.

But, I saw "Roots" first and, maybe just for that reason alone, it remains the saga about American slavery that impressed me the most with its reality and scope.

"12 Years a Slave" is certainly everything it should be.

But, if you haven't ever seen "Roots," perhaps give it a view before you watch "12 Years a Slave" again too many times.

Not having any of the TV commercials which slowed me down back in the day will lessen your video viewing time.

Hey, I remember "Roots" approaching the quality of "Lonesome Dove."

Check Kunta Kinte out.

JMO.

Your thoughts?

 

[Chest Rockwell]

I saw it and my review is . . . meh.

It is the favorite for Picture of the Year and that speaks for the quality of movies this year. I thought the acting was worthy of nomination and the (true) story is certainly one that should be told, but I'm just kind of tired of all the slavery/civil rights related movies. But, "The Academy" is comprised of mostly liberals so these movies (and anything that revolves around homosexuality/AIDS) will usually get some attention - warranted or not.

 

[bedhead]

I just don't understand why we keep "fanning the flames" of white v black. with all these movies.

The movie, "Fruitville Station", the Tarantino movie, etc. just continues the image of the oppressed black man.

Horrible things were done to the American Indian, the Japanese during WWII, and other ethnic groups.

And I can't think of a non-fiction movie about a white person getting the wrong end of the deal from another race. In my opinion, movies like this this just pisses off another generation. I'm tired of seeing one side of things that make white people look evil.

 

[huisache]

............and it is not like no black people ever owned slaves..



but it is also true that the aftereffects of this curious form of labor procurement live with us to this day in some respects.

I would like to see a movie about what happened to white women when they were captured by Comanches. Not holding my breath

 

[Clean]

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[Statalyzer]

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[bedhead]

Japanese that were US citizens, herded up and put in detention camps, not those that were in the military.

And your argument "works" in that terrible things have been done to white people by black people, black people to black people, Native American killed settlers as well.

But we don't have movies about the evil white people continually jammed down the public's throat. There is still black on black slavery happening, sexual slavery, discrimination against albinos in Africa, maybe someone could make a movie about that?

Won't happen because it isn't PC.

 

[Third Coast]

It's Hollywood - where in the name of art, liberals trying to milk every social injustice to ad nauseam reign supreme.

It's why most TV shows these days have token interracial and/or gay relationships and why Annie now has a decidedly darker completion.

 

[UTChE96]

I have a hard time watching any movie "based on a true story" that comes from Hollywood. A subject this important should never be trusted to Hollywood.

 

[Crockett]

Nobody forces us to watch this movie and, in fact, most of us won't. Anchorman 2 and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, both had box office grosses damn near double that of 12 Years a Slave.

I think 12 Years A Slave is an important, well-done movie that says a lot about humanity and inhumanity. If nothing else it gives us a measuring stick to realize every once in a while that by God, Americans and especially American southerners are a lot nicer, more just and more humane than we used to be.

 

[huisache]

important? How about a film about the african tribes which went into the interior in west africa to kidnap people to sell to the europeans? I would pay to see that. African Americans should sue the west africans for reparations----the capital raised by selling all the blacks from the interior is what allowed the west african nations to become the economic powerhouses they now are.

We wont get such a film because it doesn't fit the preferred narrative in which evil white men are the source of all the world's ills.

 

[Crockett]

Movie making is a form of art and this was a compelling movie. Criticizing a very powerful film that tells well a story based on true facts ... because it doesn't tell the story you believes needs to be told seems like playing the whiny victim. Hell, there's no law telling the movie industry what it can and cannot say.

Write a novel, finance a movie. Hell, billions are spent producing fanciful action movies and silly romantic comedies. There's a shortage of compelling narratives.

 

[huisache]

I grew up in the theater business and let me assure you that art is incidental to making movies, which are financed with considerations of who will go and how many. The craftsmen and actors are interested in the art, somewhat, but that is not what makes the films.

As for whiney victims, how about whiney distant relatives of victims?

As for based on facts, Birth of a Nation was based on facts too but I don't hear a lot a hundred years later about its compelling narrative. This compelling narrative is compelling because of certain elements of the zeitgeist.

And the book the movie was adapted from was not written by its purported author but rather by an ardent abolitionist. I like to think I would have been an abolitionist like some of my relatives but suspect I would not have been given where most of my family settled.

Slave narratives are notoriously unreliable. The ones written by abolitionists were written to denounce slavery as the worst thing in the world (no argument here) but many reminiscences written after the fact paint a picture that is probably way too rosy, I recently read a memoir ghosted for one of Sam Houston's ex manservants and it sounds almost idyllic.

Some aspects of Northrup's tale sound fishy to me, such as how he got kidnapped,.

Out of respect for your often very sound opinions I am going to see it.

 

[Crockett]

huis: just a warning. this isn't a feel good movie. I've had colonoscopies that were more fun.

I also don't think it representative of old south slavery .. it highlighted the most brutal and corrupt. But it did, I think, rather accurately portray the economic leverage that slave-ownership had on the white southerners. Many, like Thomas Jefferson, were so indebted they couldn't afford to free their slaves.

No all slavery was as brutal as depicted. My grandfather's grandfather was a slaveholder. The family oral history, tells of black men and white men going to the field each day together, coming in at lunch and in the evening eating the same food at the same table. White women and black women cooked and gardened together. At the end of the civil war when the slaves were free, the goodbyes were tearful. Were the stories real or concocted? Maybe a little of both. But I will always remember that my grandfather really liked black people, even if he called the "colored." I had a lot of forebears who were not from slaveholding families and those born before 1930, were all were uncomfortable and suspicious around blacks. Grandad, who knew "retired" slaveholders as a child, liked black people and sought out social interaction with them. He spoke respectfully of them inside or outside their presence.