All you have to do is watch the visually stunning opening scene of this film to know you’re in for something effective and to be taken very seriously…
“Cut the cane, chop it,” is the opening and barking command to a chain gang led by Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in 1841. Once a distinguished businessman and musician out of Saratoga, he’s kidnapped to Washington and sold to the owner (Benedict Cmberbatch) of a Louisiana plantation overseen by a slave hater (Paul Dano) before being transferred to another psychotic plantation owner (Michael Fassbender) and his calculating wife (Sarah Paulson) with a vendetta against one of the Sally Hemming-ish slave girls.
Based on the true story of the very book written by Solomon himself, the story talks of his need to remain calm and conscious as an internal free man, while not revealing his education externally, since it’s the very thing that will threaten his slave owners who see him as the equivalent of an animal. Everytime the whip hits him we feel it in our gut and that feeling stays with us throughout the entire story. Feel-good it ain’t, but best film of the year so far, it is.
Directed by Steve McQueen, the film turns the mirror on Americans because its not about Solomon finding his inner strength, its about him losing his place in the very society that he once earned. It’s a movie of surrendering to the universe which seems to be a current theme given that the other best film of the year Gravity captures the same emotion. ♔ ♕ ♚ ♛