12 Years a Slave

I'm always a sucker for historical documentary type films - or "costume dramas" - and this one really pressed all the buttons for me, as it had a huge moral story to tell too.

I had my doubts about going because I had suffered a most unpleasant experience last year with the film "Lincoln" (see review), set in the same period, covering a related subject and winning loads of Oscars - BUT - dull as ditchwater and unintelligible - and I didn't fancy a repeat!

This was based on a true story and the story was gripping from start to finish. Our hero is a well to do, free, black man living in New York State - he is out for a stroll and gets conned by a couple of kidnappers who drug him and sell him into slavery down south. As the title suggests, he then endures 12 years of the most demeaning conditions imaginable until a visiting carpenter listens to his story and arranges for him to be freed. We see a number of stories throughout the 12 years of his captivity that really bring out the worst of human nature and remind us in the most brutal terms in our cosy twenty first century of just what a horror slavery was.

A number of friends and colleagues have told me that they found it a "very hard watch", but that it was a "story that needed to be told". I disagree on the first point but understand why they say it - and I agree unreservedly on the second. To me it wasn't a hard watch at all - it was gripping historical drama, in many respects not dissimilar to a Jane Austen story on steroids. It had plot, moved with pace, was very emotional, showed you life as it really was, was very informative and even the old fashioned style of dialogue quickly became easy to understand. I could watch top notch drama like this every day - but there would need to be some more light hearted stuff interspersed, or I might go mad.

As for it being a "story that needed to be told" - well yes, 100%. I feared that like many programmes covering this topic it would be patronising, hectoring and end up making you feel resentful of the person telling the story. I was relieved to say that it didn't - it put you very believably in the person of the slave, and you almost felt every whiplash or racist insult he suffered yourself.

What particularly struck me was the ready acceptance with which "civilised society" treated other people as objects of property, to be kidnapped, separated from their children, traded, beaten, worked to death and generally not thought of as human beings at all - and related to this, how the subjects of the slavery are dehumanised and start accepting the situation. In some ways this is exemplified by the part that religion plays throughout the film: the white slave owners and slave traders use their Christian faith to justify everything that they do, whilst the black slaves use exactly the same religion to give them comfort and reconcile themselves to their situation.

Quite apart from the racism aspects, the film's examination of slavery holds many lessons for today's world too. There is an awful lot of "modern day slavery" going on in the world, and not just people who have been locked up in a house for thirty years. Current economic conditions give certain unscrupulous employers near carte blanche to treat their employees as they wish, in the full knowledge that they can't escape to anywhere else. I won't go any further down this line - but I'm sure that regular readers of my blog will know what I mean.

Anyway - gripping historical drama, a proper story, a full expose of the evils of slavery in a non patronising way, and food for thought about modern day attitudes - not a hard watch, but a most thought provoking way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.

02/03/14