Avis sur le produit12 Years a Slave (DVD, 2014, Canadian)

A greater understanding of actual history!

I watched it and would give it the highest rating! The casting was excellent. It’s not for those with faint hearts due to the violent actions against slaves, but the realities of it should impress even the hardest of hearts. I can’t speak for others who’ve seen the movie, but given the fact that it’s a true-to-life creation, based upon the book written by the man who experienced the terrors and misery suffered by just one man, it’s worth recommending to anyone and everyone. Lire l'avis complet...

Achat vérifié : Non

VITAL, RELEVANT, PAINFUL, TIMELY

Years ago I said that students shouldn't be allowed to graduate from an American high school without watching Amistad in its entirety to learn what WE - the folks who were entitled because they were White, sometimes educated, often landowners, and FREE - did to the Blacks we hauled over from Africa in a manner in which no one would treat a non-human "beast of burden" from whom one ultimately expected hard work.

I feel the same way about this film. I'm not a fan of monsters or violence, but I did keep my eyes open when Psycho left so many football players covering their faces or leaving the theaters when I was in high school. But when Patsey was beaten for sneaking to the plantation next door in search of a little sliver of soap with which to clean herself, I couldn't watch. It was excruciating.

This is a story which includes everything from the betrayal of Solomon Northup, a Black man who happened to have the soul and sensibilities of a musician/artist contained in the body of a work horse, through a mind-numbing series of lies, physical brutalities, and mental/emotional abuses. Though it could certainly be termed "excessive," there is nothing about it which smacks of editorial additions for the sake of emotional impact on the audience. In short: sadly, shamefully, remorsefully, it rings true.

Dignity? It was not to be found in the mansions of the landed "gentry," but in the huts and hovels of the slaves they sought to control, limit, and demean.

Integrity? Hope? Likewise.

After betrayals, jealousies, and machinations all around it was with some astonishment that we learn that Brad Pitt's carpenter character "Bass" was a Canadian abolitionist who did assist, risking his own hide to convey a letter that Solomon Northup had written to his White friends in Upstate New York. More astonishment that those White friends rose horseback all the way to the Antebellum South to prove that Northup was who he said he was, indeed a Freeman. And finally, relief that he returned joyfully to the family who knew nothing of him for 12 long years.

Sadly, we know nothing of Northup's last years, whether or not the family, even his marriage, stayed intact after his long absence. The date and manner of his death remain unknown despite his book after which the movie was titled, and the brief celebrity he enjoyed after its publication. Even his burial place is unknown.

I write this from Dallas 3 weeks after the massacre of 9 African Americans attending a Bible study in their South Carolina parish, a church that has had well over 100 years' history with slavery, segregation, and resistance. I write this 3 weeks after the massacre of a peace-loving pastor who was also one of the most respected members of the state Legislature, leading that Bible study. I write this 3 weeks after his wife and youngest daughter hid, terrified, in his office, listening to the gunshots that killed their husband and father and 8 of their dearest friends. I write this as a staunch Democrat 2 weeks after the very Republican Governor of South Carolina gathered the titled leading political figures of her state around her and proclaimed that it was time for the so-called Confederate Flag to be removed from the grounds of the Capitol and placed in a museum, where it belonged. I write this only days after such legislation passed the state Senate 36 to 3, while opponents in the Legislature claim their 100 amendments will stop the law's passage.

It isn't over...See this film!Lire l'avis complet...

12 yrs a slave

Good movie

Achat vérifié :  Oui | État : occasion | Vendu par : thirteen-twenty