CA 6
12 years a slave
Jt bioscoop Apeldoorn
01-03-14
General information
For my sixth cultural activity I went to the critically acclaimed film 12 years a slave. The film
won an Oscar for best film in 2014. The film is an adaption of the book with the same name
and is based on the life of the author Solomon Northup. Solomon played by Chiwetel Ejiofor,
was a free man in New York. In 1841 he was kidnapped from Washington D.C. and got sold
as a slave, unable to prove that he was a free man. He was initially bought by Master Ford
(Benedict Cumberbatch) who actually became fond of Solomon or Platt as he was called by
the slave traders, and listened to Solomon’s ideas for the plantation. Solomon then gets into
an argument with one of the overseers on the plantation and has to leave. He goes to Edwin
Epps (Michael Fassbender) another plantation owner where he has to collect cotton. He is
not good at this work and gets beaten regularly. Several times he tries to get out by writing a
letter to his wife but he needs paper, a pen and someone to post it for him which is harder
than he thinks. In the end he finds someone who will post the card called Bass (Brad Pitt)
and he gets reunited with his family after 12 years.
Personally I really wanted to see this film and because I still needed a CA for Arts and
Culture this was the perfect opportunity. I read several reviews about the film that said it
was hard to watch because of the violence though they were American reviews and they
generally cannot handle too much. For me the scenes with whip lashes and beatings were
not too difficult to watch since they didn’t show a lot of details and although the scars
depicted the reality they weren’t too shocking. I thought they gave an accurate image of the
practices of the plantation owners in that time. There was one scene for me that was a bit
harder and I felt it was a little unnecessary. Once Solomon gets into a fight with Tibeats,
Tibeats decides to get some help and try to hang Solomon. One of the other masters helps
Solomon out but decides to leave him hanging like that until Master Ford can see it. From
the surroundings the audience knows that he must have been hanging there for several
hours barely touching the ground with his toes. The decision of leaving him there for Ford is
not what bothers me but the scene takes quite a long time and it feels uneasy.
It was quite striking for me that they took free men from the North to work in the South and
that no one would listen to them which gave me a feeling of injustice just like the way the
masters treated these people like property or cattle.