Movie Review: 12 Years a Slave..is cold, hard and relentless

12 Years a slave is a very well made movie. No one can doubt that. However, despite how good it is, I wouldn’t say you should go and book your tickets right away. Here’s why

The thing about a true story is that it is scarcely the romanticized stuff we want it to be. The highs and lows cannot be pre-decided, hardly ever are things ‘planned’ to go a certain and even so, most of those times also the plan tends to get derailed. Thus, if one has suffered much hardship, the hopelessness of the situation has been all too obvious, despite any amount of courage and there has been much despair and grief, then that’s how their story will be. One can’t fault the makers for it. And that’s the issue with 12 Years a Slave

Exquisitely executed, in painful (and I mean the word literally here, as well) detail Steve McQueen does not shy away from showing the horrors that a man suffered in the despicable act of slavery. The basest of human emotions and utter sadism is exposed bare (again, quite literally) in scene after scene in unrelenting fashion. That such savagery existed amongst humans, itself, is a shame for humanity altogether and the movie makes no efforts to hide any of it.

As a result then, 12 Years a Slave can scarcely be described as ‘entertaining’. If anything, it gets more and more gruesome and depressing as it progresses and while you feel for the protagonist and his circumstances, the whole situation itself is over-whelmingly off-putting. After a point, the whip lashes, kicks, bared backs and blood marks become too much to withstand and you will the movie to move on to the better part, content-wise.

Apart from the subject matter itself, the treatment of the movie is perfected to a fault. Dialogues spoken plainly would sting you long after they’ve been said. A lingering scene will have you thinking deeply about it rather than pass it off as a mere occurrence. The character of Chiwetel Ejiofor suffers too much but is pulled of extremely well by him. That said, I don’t think his character was as complex as the others in the race for the Oscars. Brad Pitt’s role is too small to speak of. Michael Fassbender is fantastic as the evil slave owner and Benedict Cumberbatch is more than equal to his relatively smaller role as Mr. Ford

12 Years a Slave is right up there in terms of quality movie making. However, given the extremely depressing nature and hopelessness of the situation the protagonist finds himself in over and over again, for majority of the movie, it makes for a rather grim watch. Bear that in mind if you decide to go for this one