About a hundred and fifty years ago, when Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities were popular books, slavery was all the rage in the Southern United States. The defining characteristic of slaves was the color of their skin. A slave might sell for $1000 dollars, which translates to about $27,000 today-give or take. So this means that poor white trash who see Free People walking around in the Northern States would be highly motivated to capture these people and ship them South. This is what happens to our hero here. He is a free man who is sold as a slave.
This is a harrowing tale. Solomon is a highly intelligent man and thus has value to some of the Slave Owners. To others any slave who shows signs of intelligence is a threat to be eliminated.
His situation is hopeless. There is no way out. No one to help him. No one who listens when he tries to tell them his real name. People are beaten and whipped and raped and die all around him. He is beaten and forced to beat someone else. These are not the happy slaves we meet in Gone With The Wind.
12 Years a Slave is a beautiful film for all of that. The music is subtle and moving. The many long takes of nothing but a full moon or a shock riddled face serve the narrative. It’s simply impossible to portray 12 years in two hours. The scenes that are given more than a passing glance are therefor important ones. The many times that some atrocity takes place and the other slaves simple go back about their business. The wanton cruelty of the wives of the plantation owners. The complete helplessness of the slaves in all aspects of their lives.
I haven’t read the book, but I get the general impression that Solomon considered himself especially abused because he was a man of letters and learning. At the start of the film one of the other learned men considers the slaves around then as nothing but animals-just as the white slave owners did. In these opening scenes it is all but impossible to tell one captive from another. Only a few of the slaves matter to Solomon, but he can do nothing to help them. His sole reason for living is to return to his lost life in the North.
It was a bleak story and at the end of his 12 years he returns home and the credits roll. Like so many tales from the past, 12 Years a Slave makes me want to invent a time machine. In this case I would go back and kill every white person living South of the Mason Dixon Line, and a few living North of it for good measure.
