12 Years A Slave
(AKA: Slavery bad,
Brad Pitt good)
Sorry for the delay
but today I’ll just post the movies left for this year “Best picture”
Is said in
screenwriting that the story should be like a rollercoaster, with ups and
downs, to make you feel safe and then scare you, make you worry about the
characters, give you trouble and peace, change the rhythm of the film and keep
you guessing what is going to happen, but this movie has a complete different
idea of getting the audience interested, and that is, to make everything with
the same tone and pace, so the audience get the tedious of being a slave, I
think?
I hope you don’t get
the wrong impression, this is a good movie, but kind of boring, because it
feels the same from beginning to end, even when he is free again you feel it
exactly the same, and I don’t doubt that how the things were back in the day,
but if I learned something about adaptation is that you can trim a little bit
the story to give those moments where is calm and feels like everything is
going to be better and make other moments like is the worst it could happen.
Somebody can say that I’m not getting in the story to feel those changes, well
that is not my problem, is the writer’s, director’s and cast problem, because
they have to make me feel like I care, but is just plain this movie, there is
never more or less tension or worry, always the same level, and like in wolf of
wall street you get desensitized and see it like something normal, by the middle
of the movie the audience acts like people of that time, looking at slavery and
all that like something of the everyday living, and that’s a problem because it
loose its impact and strength.
The characters outside
the Main protagonist are cardboard cuts of stock characters, the slave owner
that likes his slaves, the mean slave owner and the drunk, among the characters
and that gives you the idea that is not a real story, because the mean guy is
really mean and doesn’t have any other character traits than drink and lash people
around, no inside his life that I understand because is not like he was inside
his house to see what happened there but everybody is there just as background
to make the main character shine and be notice even more.
If any of my
instructors that had a problem with my script tells me that they liked this
movie you’ll have to also take back everything you said about my script,
because of Brad Pitt scene where he appears and save the day, is in the third
act of the movie and is pretty much the solution to everything, is god with an
Amish look, and that feels like a deus ex machina that no matter how real that
was, feels like the writer didn’t knew how to end it and just tossed a Brad
Pitt to save the day, as I said before, you can trim it a little bit to make it
look less convenient.
Some people say that the
scene of the lashes is kind of gruesome and that raw, but it looks almost like
the one in Starship Troopers, is not that bad. Also I think I have read a lot of
books where they lash people so in my mind it looks way worse than that.
When I heard that
Lupita Nyong'o was nominated for the Oscar I thought that she deserve it (because
the other that were nominated where in really crappy movies) I mean the scene
where she gets a hit on the head with a glass bottle is great, if she acted
that and the bottle was CGI it looked great, and if it wasn’t, well anyone that
can take hit like that deserves an Oscar :P
In general the movie
is fine but as I said, it might feel that is long and nothing is happening,
because of that this movie is not worthy of being among the best picture of the
year, have some good highlights but beyond that is somewhere in the dull side,
even so you can watch it and might be even enjoy it.
You can see that this
movie was made to aim for an Oscar, not to please the audience or to make them
think about the wrongs of the past or anything, this movie is an Oscar seeker
and nothing else.
As Eddy Murphy said in
Bowfinger “White boys always get the
Oscar. It's a known fact. Did I ever get a nomination? No! You know why? Cause
I hadn't played any of them slave roles, and get my ass whipped. That's how you
get the nomination. A black dude who plays a slave that gets his ass whipped
gets the nomination, a white guy who plays an idiot gets the Oscar. That's what
I need, I need to play a retarded slave, then I'll get the Oscar.”
*** 3 stars (Good but
meh, nothing memorable about it)
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