Film Analysis: 12 Years A Slave

Improved Essays
12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave is definitely not a Disney film and in no way is it glossed over. It’s not a movie with lavish costumes, grand Southern balls or even a war time love story. It is simply one man’s story about his time as a slave and the physical and emotional abuse suffered at the hands of his "owners." 12 Years a Slave is based on the memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup, a black man who was born free but was kidnapped and forced into slavery for 12 years of his life. Solomon a violinist by trade lives as a free man with his wife and children in Saratoga, NY. One day when his wife and children are away from home, two men approach Solomon and tell him that they have a great opportunity for him playing the violin
…show more content…
The film is full of stunning visuals that doesn’t gloss over the strong message and provokes serious questions of morality and ethics within the viewer. The scene of Solomon hanging is a fitting example of this exemplary cinematography. Through these shots the audience gets a true sense of the passage of time and gets an overwhelming sense of hatred, fear and discomfort, the same feeling Solomon must have had during that moment. So often these things are glossed over and the audience is let off the hook, and that’s where so many of the films in the past have failed.

Another one of the many things cinematographer Sean Bobbitt used that helped connect the audience to the film to 12 Years a Slave was the scenery of Louisiana. One of the things that was done superbly well in this film was the contrast between the beauty of the locations and the harsh reality of slavery. They used a number of effects that made the scenery stand out even more.

In conclusion, 12 Years a Slave is a truly powerful film that gave me a lot to think about. It is a perfect example of contrasting the beauty of this world with the harsh reality of human kind. Also the acting, staging and cinematography allowed me to truly connect to the story but above all it’s a powerful, though provoking, and beautiful work of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    How it affected people and families, and even the trustworthiness of the church and even of children. In a textbook you could never get the same amount of personal connection or information that you got from this two and a half hour long movie. This was not only a tragic tale but one of drama, corruption, and most importantly it is a tale remembrance, so we never forget what misfortune has…

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Phoebe Wolfe Professor Neary ENGL 399.96: Race and Visual Culture 10/30/2014 Frederick Douglass’s Demolition and Reconstruction of Visual Codification The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass exemplifies the complexities and paradoxes involved in the genre of the slave narrative. While, at many points in the narrative, Douglass appears to be merely conforming to the standard requirements of the slave narrative genre, the subtleties and intricacies of his work challenge both common characterizations of slaves and the narrative conventions themselves. By appropriating the very mechanisms and tropes that readers expected of him, Douglass retools traditional techniques to illustrate his specific account of slavery and to assert his humanity.…

    • 1748 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This is a narrative of a slave who freed himself. He went by the name of Frederick Douglass. The book was very brutal and intense. This gave great incite on what slavery was like on the plantation. It also covered what slaves as well as himself went through during slave days.…

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, reads an incredible story of one man’s struggle to become a free from the bonds of slavery. Experiencing his hardships and celebrate his triumphs along the way, the story saddens you with the cruelty of humans, but leaves you crying for joy. Written to prove a well-educated black man was indeed a slave and even with a life riddled with trials and tribulations he roses above and succeeded in obtaining his dream of being a freeman. Fredrick Douglas was born a slave and as a small child he was unable to work in the fields and spent a lot of his days wondering around the plantations where he lived.…

    • 966 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It recreated the hysteria and chaos that surrounded the small village really well. The film shows the viewer how big a role religion played during this time period. There were far too many unnecessary deaths caused by the hands of a young and foolish woman who thought she could marry a man by getting rid of his wife through false…

    • 1058 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Flogging scars and loss of identity; kidnapped, chained, and tortured, Chiwetel Ejiofor, playing the character of Solomon Northup, is a man struggling to survive in the pre civil war south in the movie 12 Years a Slave. Steve McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley efficiently accomplish the gut wrenching memoir of Solomon Northup by the astonishing work of sound, dialogue, and framework. Solomon Northup was a free black man from Saratoga Springs, New York who is taken away from his family and bargained for slavery in the South. Sold to the cruelty of one particular owner Edwin Epps, surprisingly he finds kindness from one more, as he struggles constantly to survive and keep up with the little dignity he had left throughout this dehumanizing…

    • 145 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    John Browns War Analysis

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages

    John Browns War was created by the hatred of slavery by John Brown. By many Brown was considered a fanatic, murderer, traitor, and martyr. Browns fight against slavery was a precursor to the Civil War. Born in Connecticut, Brown was the son of Owen Brown a tailor and shoemaker. Brown is raised up in stories of the bible and to despise slavery.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From its opening account of his birth to its closing pages depicting his new-found freedom, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself is characterized in part by its strikingly fluid, refined, and effective prose style. Despite his masterful control of language a paradoxical problem seems to subtly haunt Douglass's Narrative: the text's memorable prose is perhaps ironically too good. As an ex-slave autobiographer, Douglass was traveling a road already well-worn by the accepted conventions of his day for both autobiographies and slave narratives.…

    • 1479 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Night John Reaction Paper

    • 970 Words
    • 4 Pages

    1. The story of Nightjohn reveals insight into cruel truths in American history as it follows the encounters of a 12-year-old slave young lady (Sarny) in the 1850s. Sarny uncovered the abuse suffered by her people on the plantation. Sarny knows the consequence for learning how to read and write, but agrees to learn it from Night John( new slave) who offers to teach her the alphabet. John says that figuring out how to read is freedom since slavery is limited by laws and deeds which the slaves can not read.…

    • 970 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sankofa Movie Analysis

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Movie Sankofa accurately depicted the slavery experience in a very accurate manner, Sankofa itself is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that translates go back and study your past. The movie depicted slavery in almost the exact way it really happened, Sankofa shows us the if African American had the true picture of slavery experience, they would truly cherish and appreciate breathe of freedom we have today. In fact, this true because this current generation has no idea, on how the slave experience was really about, a lot of people prefer to even talk about this issue because they feel its incident that happened in the past. According to the movie, if we knew the pain and the hardship our forefathers passed through, it might affect…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Unfortunately, people are constantly disappearing. We regularly hear the news about suddenly missing children and adults. Sometimes they are missing for a short period of time, sometimes for much longer or even, there are cases in which they're never found. No one knows why and how it happens. When it comes to the disappearing, everything can disappear - as planes and ships around the Bermuda triangle (which is still a mystery to scientists) and also the famous celebrities.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Fifty Years in Chains is a remarkable story told in the perspective of a slave in the deep south, Charles Ball. From being sold away from his mom at age four to running away for his freedom, Ball faces many struggles and narrates a first-hand tale of what it was like to be a slave. Throughout his life, Ball had numerous kinds of masters: some were kind natured while others were extremely cruel. In reflecting on his experiences with these different masters, Ball exemplified the diverse dynamics of the relationship between a slave and their master. There were many different and complex dynamics in the relationship between a slave and their master some of which were not even noticed by either party.…

    • 1696 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Both “12 Years a Slave” and “Amistad have their fair share of the true history behind each film. In “Amistad” Spielberg somewhat abuses history to make the film more entertaining. A prime example is the scene where we see the salve on the slave ship going through the middle passage and we witness how they are being treated. While that the film tells a true story of a group of Mende people from Sierra Leone, who take over a Spanish slave ship named A La Amistad, it is mainly A film of white hero worship. Much of the movie is occupied with the all white Supreme Court and where white lawyers defend the poor basically mute Africans.…

    • 1290 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Slavery is a condition in which one human being is owned by another and is under the owner's control, especially in involuntary servitude. The history of slavery spans from every culture, nationality and religion and from ancient times to the modern times. However, the social, economic, and legal position of slaves was different in different systems of slavery in different times and places. Slavery can be defined as an institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another person, just like a piece of furniture, and exact labor from that person. Since the arrival of the twentieth century, the term slavery has been more broadly understood as something that include forced labor.…

    • 1261 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Northup, Solomon. 12 Years A Slave. Originally published in 1853 by Derby & Miller. (240 pages) 12 Years A Slave, by Solomon Northup is a memoir and personal narrative about the hardships of slavery during the 1800’s. An autobiography written jam packed with several specific accounts of mistreatment in the black community.…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics