#12YearsASlave--A Pygmy Review:

You have no doubt heard a lot of people making a lot of fuss about "12 Years a Slave." The reason they are making this fuss is because the film is a transcendent horror story, an exquisitely rendered glimpse into the grotesque wickedness and contemptible hypocrisy that will forever mar the high-minded ideals of this nation's founding. The story, of a pre-Civil war free black man from upstate New York who is abducted from his family and sold into slavery for 12 years, is all the more powerful because it is true. This is a life stolen and an inner strength, in the midst of that loss, struggling to maintain dignity if not hope (a moment in the film where the lead character finally breaks and accepts his fate is agonizing to behold). Here, slavery is shown as an evil that inherently corrupts both slave and slave owner--a corporate cancer that destroys all it touches.

Director Steve McQueen, who also made the rapturous "Hunger," has crafted of film of quiet reflection and deep humanity, channeled through peerless performances from such actors as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Benedict Cummberbatch and Brad Pitt. The language they employ is almost Shakespearian in its cadence. But the film is told, not in words, but in eyes, in haggard faces, in hunched bodies. McQueen achieves the visual and lyrical majesty of Terrance Malick, without falling victim to the latter's kaleidoscope narrative. Shots are held far longer than we are used to, giving us no choice but to begin addressing what we see. We are forced to stare this country's most virulent sin straight in the face, unblinking. Beautifully lit and composed, barbarity and inhumanity have rarely been rendered with such aesthetic grace. The soundtrack, a mixture of negro spirituals and orchestral score, perfectly guides the film through the emotional brambles. Hans Zimmer, known for epic works just as "The Dark Knight" and "Inception," revisits the melancholy elegance of his incomparable "Thin Red Line" (which can be heard in the latter half of the attached trailer).

This is one of the finest films of the year. Perhaps the finest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiw1cYXQw4g

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