I saw it tonight with the wife and I thought it was really good.
But not great.
I don’t think they are by any means identical, but I found Amistad(1997) to be a far better and more powerful movie than this one. This movie did not particularly move me and I felt it was kind of…bland.
Chewitel Edjifor is always good(hey, he’s in Amistad too!) and every other actor does a good job, too.
It’s the script, the editing, the overall direction of the movie.
The only scene that moved my wife or me was the whipping scene of Patsey. Curious side note: How long would it take to heal from wounds as bad as the whipping in this movie? I thought she’d have to lay on her stomach for…a month or so for those wounds to be bearable for movement.
Anyway, it was a fine movie and I liked it, but it will not eventually be on my top 10 for 2013, or at least not my top 5.
This film has just opened in the UK. I saw it last night in a packed cinema.
Thought it was really good; I’ve wanted to see Shame for a while, so I’m interested in Steve McQueen. Apparently his films often focus on what is happening to the characters, and don’t delve into characters’ inner minds/psychology. The long, long shot of Solomon with a noose around his neck is characteristic.
I’m intrigued in one of his upcoming projects, from Wiki:
My thoughts on the film specifically:
I thought it was very good, and worthwhile. I think it’s easy to forget just how inhumane slavery was. And that it wasn’t that long ago.
The score was excellent.
Cumberbatch wasn’t bad despite a poor attempt at a Southern accent but Brad Pitt stuck out like a sore thumb. Chiwetel was great, but then I’ve been a fan of his for a while. In more ways than one. :o Paul Giammatti was fantastic, and fucking scary. The woman playing Patsey was brilliant.
[QUOTE=palacheck]
Several black British actors as well as the director(?) I see.
I don’t know why, but for some reason that seems strange to me. Inauthentic or something, I don’t know.
[/QUOTE]
Can’t explain why but I take issue with this - maybe because the question of authenticity seems to be raised more for black actors than anyone else; lots of people talked about how some of the cast of *The Wire *was actually from ‘the street’ when really all of the main parts were played by very talented people. Actors are actors, they bring authenticity to the part - if they do - because of talent.
Also, Steve McQueen is of Caribbean descent. Plantation based slavery, the horrors of the middle passage, are in his ancestry as much as they are for African-Americans.
I read the book, and while the movie is mostly following it, I do wonder if questions have been raised about the authenticity of the book. It was written by an anti slavery journalist IIRC. Epps seems almost cartoonish in it.
I saw this yesterday as it’s not long been out in the UK. Two things that stuck out for me were the unrealism of the scenes of his family in the past, that seemed far too good to be possible, like something out of Age Of Innocence, and Brad Pitt’s performance.
On reflection, however, they both work if viewed in a certain way. The previous happiness was Solomon’s memories of it, enhanced and distorted into a utopia by years of deprivation, and Pitt’s appearance as, effectively, a liberator, speaking of freedom and believing his story, was so far from the routine that it needed to be depicted in a way that departs from it.
A little while ago I started a thread about 12 Years a Slave and was directed to this one. Seeing it again on the list at Redbox made me remember my thoughts about it at the time I watched it. I hadn’t read this thread before today but now I have.
I stated that I wish the movie had started with Solomon’s struggle for justice that was barely touched on at the end, then follow it with the scene where he and his family are shopping in the general store. His lack of reaction to another black man being unceremoniously removed would have then shown, to me, his change from acceptance of what was going on at the time, to activism. The portrayal of brutality is powerful but if this aspect had been developed with it’s own years long struggle I feel the movie could have also been empowering.