12 YEARS A SLAVE REVIEW

For goodness sake. It’s taken my eyes twelve hours to recover from looking puffy, having spent nearly the entire length of “12 Years A Slave” crying. The only bit I stopped crying in was when Brad Pitt made an appearance. What an amazing film – Chiwetel Ejiofor who plays Solomon North is unbelievable as a free-born African American refined violinist from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.

The film is beautifully shot – lovely light and lots of interesting angles, but more than that is obviously the incredible story – taken from a book written in something like 1853 – shocking to think of it as a true story and as we made our way to a local wine bar to discuss the trauma of sitting through a film like that we discussed how monstrously the slaves were treated by the white farmers and their wives. This is a period of history we should all return to regularly in order to learn from the lessons of the past. There were some bright lights and anti-slavery campaigners like Wilberforce and Lincoln who described the trade as far back as 1791 as a “disgrace and dishonour to this country”. Apparently it is expected that the film won’t go down well in the USA because of the collective shame it will engender – the important thing to remember however is that British traders were responsible for shipping over 3 million people from Africa to slave markets in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries and therefore it is all nations who must work together to combat the horror of slavery. Those who actually managed to survive the harsh conditions during the crossing were condemned to a life of slavery for their whole entire life. It wasn’t until 1807 that the Commons finally voted to outlaw the traffic in humans.

So when did Harper Lee publish “To Kill A Mockingbird?” Centuries later and still not a lot had improved between whites and blacks. Martin Luther King, Rosa – the woman on the bus, it is frankly shameful and this film will bring the cruelty home to you.

But the scary thing is that the enslavement of human beings still persists in the world. The sale of human beings. You can hardly believe there is a trade in human beings. Seen Taken? We have, in Britain, a new “Modern Slavery Bill” to protect gangs trafficking vulnerable people around the world. These sorts of films are there to make us not only think, but to make us act and if campaigners could achieve so much against huge obstacles 200 years ago, then surely we as a collective voice can do the same now.

For a start, it’s getting my vote for a Brit award – way better than Gravity….