Keanu O'Neal
10/15/2014
Evaluation Draft 1
12 Years A Slave One of the great movies filmed this year is “12 Years A slave”, shot and directed by Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen is British artist, director and screenwriter. His films include “Hunger” filmed in 2008, “Shame” filmed in 2011 and of course “12 Years a Slave” filmed in 2013. An action packed film, that tells a true story of Solomon Northup and how he went from being a free man to being sold into slavery for a total of 12 years. This film was based off a book written by Solomon Northup himself staring himself, his wife Anne Hampton Throughout the movie, the plot is based all on Solomon Northup and his journey to become free again. The book was attention grabbing, shocking, and left readers baffled at how events in this story happened all the time. The movie can be given the same critique. Solomon Northup is another example of the injustice that plagued the African American community for many years and in some cases still does today. Even after the following events occurred he still could not find justice. Solomon was born a freeman in New York however his dad was a slave to family that resided in Rhode Island. At a young age he learned many crafts such as repairing canals from helping his father and playing the violin. He became very skilled at both and uses his ability to play the violin. to make money in the winter. He also get married his wife is a fantastic cook so she travels to different places to cook they have three kids, two girls one boy. Solomon was so good at playing the violin. that word gets out all along the free states. At an event he was playing at he was approached by two white men to travel with them and play in their tour. He agrees because they seem like nice men, but that seems to all change. One night Solomon and the two men go out to dinner to celebrate furthering their tour but Solomon drinks to much wine and becomes drunk. The two men help him to his room and the next thing he knows he wake up in chains. He then realizes he's in a slave pen and starts to panic. Eventually, he settles down and when he does he meets three other slaves Clemons Ray, John Williams and Randall. The film continues to show his journey threw the different plantations and the different type of people he meets some angry and mean and some nice. He gets to display his talent with a violin at times. At the end of the film after several attempts of trying to get the word out he gets freed and returned to his family who has grown up one of his daughters is even married. During the film Solomon Northup, emotionally goes threw ups and downs, from wanting to kill himself, to wanting to help other slaves and more complacent with his job as a slave. Firstly, watching this film can give anyone chills. Steve McQueen was able to bring a sense of adventure and detachment, as well the fear that continued to increase as the movie went on. Solomon came from being very well dressed and manicured to being in basically rags. The slave owners he worked for always had nice houses that I would describe to be warm if it was not on a plantation. Throughout the scenes you can tell that Solomon is starting to lose hope of being freed and returned to his family. One of the saddest moments in the film is watching Solomon contest to the people who have him in chains that he is a free man and watching them yell at him and beat him till he finally conforms to their name change and to stop saying he is free. Also, watching the slave owner rape and abuse a slave over and over till she eventually asks Solomon to kill her can sure make viewers lose some sleep. Seeing the treatment of so many African Americans can defeinatly haunt you for a while. The actors were all very convincing and made you feel everything they said or did. For example, Solomon created an image of hopeful, surviving man who misses his family and friends. While the other slaves thought he was dumb for hanging on to his past. The
