12 YEARS A SLAVE - 5th February 2014

There is a lot of buzz around '12 YEARS A SLAVE' which I saw last night at The Cremorne Orpheum Picture Palace. Hardly surprising really given that it will tick many of the Academy's boxes - strong cast, period piece, true story, human tragedy, adversity, courage, well filmed if a little art house - all the makings of an Oscar win or two.

This film introduces us to accomplished violinist Solomon Northrup (played brilliantly by Chiwetel Ejiofor) residing as a free man with his family in Saratoga in 1841. Life is good, and as a free man he can almost do as he pleases, until after a drunken celebratory evening with new found 'friends' wakes up locked up and banged up in chains somewhere in Washington. Savagely beaten by his keepers for being black, he is shipped off down South and given the new name of 'Platt' which he carries through with him for the next twelve years as a slave on the timber, then cotton and then sugar cane plantations working for the ruling white man.

Sold off by Paul Giamatti, initially to Benedict Cumberbatch who treats him with some respect, gives a degree of responsibility and offers random acts of kindness including the provision of a violin. A couple of years in though and as a result of a run-in with a 'Master' on the timber plantation, Platt is sold to Michael Fassbender (Edwin Epps) who is a very different box & dice altogether. Nasty, malicious, controlling and prepared to go to any length to exert his supreme authority over his black 'property' this is where the film veers into grim, sadistic, heart wrenching, and horrific territory. Fassbender delivers a strong believable performance however, that will have you gawping in disbelief at the cruelty humans are capable of doing to each other because of the colour of their skin (bearing in mind this is a true story of an era that Americans would rather forget!).

For a brief time Platt is sold off to third Master for just one cotton season before returning to the Epps plantation and back to the waiting, wringing hands of Fassbender. Brad Pitt appears in two closing scenes as Platt's white slavery abolitionist saviour and ticket back to freedom, his family and Saratoga ultimately.

This is not an uplifting film, even at the end when Solomon Northrup is reunited with his grown family. There is much hardship, adversity, anguish, violence and horror in this film, but it is a story worth telling, and Director, Steve McQueen handles the subject matter well, and has given us a film experience that will leave you thinking long after the credits have rolled.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-