12 Years of Slavery, Movie Review Example

The Realism of Slavery

In the movie “12 Years a Slave”, the story of a free Afro-American from New York Solomon Northup is told. The narration is delivered through his experience of being tricked into slavery in 1841 and ending up working on the plantation in New Orleans. The core of the movie is a demonstration of slavery from the perspective of an individual who was legally a free man but was tricked into slavery by a job offer in Washington. Solomon was a violinist, and he was forcefully taken away from his wife and children who stayed in New York to wonder what happened to him.

The movie shows the diverse aspects of slavery as Solomon is tossed from one plantation to another. While his first owner Mr. Ford appreciated Solomon’s talents as a musician and gifted him with a violin, his next owner Mr. Epps is a complete embodiment of a sadistic, religious fanatic, who is convinced that slavery is God’s will and that he had every right to do with his slaves whichever he wanted. Solomon like other slaves has to fulfill the norm of picking 200 pounds of cotton per day. On this plantation, he meets a slave girl Patsey, who is Epps’ favorite target for his sexual desires and punishments of his jealous wife. While Solomon’s situation is frustrating, Patsey’s is just unbearable and worse than death. When a cotton worm attacks Epps’ farm he sends his slaves to other plantation owners, which gives Solomon an opportunity to tell his story to a Canadian Worker Bass who then manages to send a letter to Solomon’s family. Finally, he is released and has to say goodbye to Patsey’s whose position remains the same. Solomon comes back to his family to see he has grandchildren.  Although he filed a lawsuit against people who enslaved him, he lost it.

In terms of treating the subject of slavery, being based on the true story and involving real historical figures, the movie gives a detailed and in-depth picture of slavery in the US. In this regard, it shows the diversity of slave owners’ justifications of their rights to enslave other human beings, and also the unnatural monstrosity of the slavery experience in general. The movie demonstrates that while, in the case of male slaves, the situation was terrible, female slaves suffered dual abuse as an enslaved worker and as an object of sexual abuse. This is well-demonstrated through the storyline of Patsey’s slave life and Solomon’s. While he had a hope to escape his condition of slavery, since he was legally a free man, her only hope was to die. The depth of her despair was shown when she asked Solomon to kill her.

The movie also shows the socio-political and legal contexts of slavery in the American society of that time. In this regard, it demonstrates how plantation owners make favors to each other with the use of the slave force and a means of payment, demonstrating commodification of a human life. On the other hand, in terms of the legal system, although it was illegal to enslave free Afro-Americans, the fact that Solomon lost his lawsuit demonstrates that the legal system was far from being democratic and wealthy plantation owners had a tremendous influence in the American society and consequent politics. Thus, the movie managed to demonstrate the inconsistency of the slavery with any human or democratic values, yet it was supported in the American society of the time.

In terms of the personal understanding of the pluralism and the correlation between the influences of non-party actors on politics, this movie strengthened my belief that pluralism went a long way of development and yet remains far from ideal. The economic interest of the wealthiest groups of society managed to reduce the value of human life to a simple commodity to gain profit. Their economic and political strength was in enslaved people, and since people want to be free it could not last forever. Eventually pluralism prevailed.