12 Years a Slave

It soon became apparent the harsh reality of how brutal slavery was during the 1800s. The film portrayed the horrific and violent aspect of slavery whilst telling the story of "Platt". It was an authentic representation of slavery because we saw different sides to it, The first is a free man who was forced into slavery, which is a side that for me personally I had not hard of before. This shows that the film is making a modern audience more aware of the less well known events that do not have as much awareness. Also we see a "kinder" slave owner in Ford who did not want to separate the mother from her children and also respected Soloman's musical talents. We also see a plantation where a black woman is treated equally as a white woman. It is at this point that Soloman sees how Patsy is given special treatment only because of Epps' dark favouritism of Patsey. The film  represents such a difficult part of history with respect and ease, even though it does tend to focus on the brutal aspects it does show us the difficulties the slaves had to endure even in a short period of time.

Chiwetel Ejiofor's outstanding acting in portraying Soloman's hope and despair adds real emotion to the film. How he presents hope at the start of the film that he will be a free man again, that someone will find his papers and set him free. The resilience to fight to keep his name Soloman Northup and refuse to answer to the name Platt just shows how at first the slaves had the strength to try and be themselves. However as soon as a whip comes out he slowly starts to lose his sense of hope and realises he is in fact a slave and will probably never see his wife and children again. We can see this pivotal moment when Soloman sees the letter he had wrote to his family burn into ash. At this point we can see by his facial expressions that he has lost all hope, he had one chance to escape and that had gone. Soon after this scene "Platt" joins in singing the song Roll, Jordan, roll, this suggests that the only hope of escape exists in death. The sense of despair really does enhance how awful slavery was. He was a free, well educated man who had the rest of his life ahead of him was kidnapped into such a completely opposite situation. He believes that he will never be a free man, the only way to escape this living hell is to die.

The film does seem to be based on violence, so when Bass offers a different view it does hit home that not every American was in favour of slavery. The contrast between Bass and Epps does have a moral impact, it shows that some people saw slaves as human beings and should not be viewed as property. After all it was Bass who sent a letter on behalf of Soloman who eventually led him to become a free man. This is a beautiful scene that makes us see the side of slavery that we are not as familiar with, a white man was willing to risk his life to save a black man.

Even though 12 Years a Slave is based on a true story Hollywood did not over glamorise the scene which made it heart warming to see Soloman return home to his family, Again this made the film more authentic because these attitudes were not seen as the norm therefore to be overplayed would make it lose its original meaning and would not have had historical value.