What everyone thinks: It's an important film. Possibility number one, 12 Years a Slave could win. Possibility number two, youre all racists, Ellen DeGeneres said at the start of this year Oscar ceremony, which perfectly captures the mood surrounding Steve McQueen's Best Picture winner; it's a film so powerful you must be in awe of it. This argument was carted out through the massive press push the release brought with it and while its true the film gives us an enlightening view of what it was like on the plantations, doesn't that distract from what the film is really about? The real reason it's good: It's an artistically made film focusing on a single journey. You can say slavery has never been covered seriously in media before only if you're a short-sighted fool who thinks what the director says on a press junket is gospel. There's been countless pieces that take a look at slavery (even ones without a terrible Aussie impression from the director). The obvious one is Roots, a landmark miniseries from 1977 that traced a family line from abduction in Africa all the way through to abolition. To put the weight of an issue on the back of a film really takes away from what makes it work as, well, a film. 12 Years A Slave is the story of one man who gets tricked, suffers and is eventually freed; it's probing the man, not the whole trade.
