I wanted to call this post hurrah it’s Oscar season – part 2 but there is no hurrah in this movie. It is a brutal, hard hitting, in your face story about slavery and cruelty of mankind. I watched the entire movie with feeling of revulsion and the crying was not cathartic at all it was of shame, of shame of the human race that this is how we act. Watching the movie I could not stop thinking that this is not a historical tale about 19th century slavery in the US, there is still modern day slavery in this day and age in western countries and that is what made it so hard to watch. I could not tell myself those evil white people 200 hundred years ago we are better than them, when everyday there is another story in England about people that were kept in state of slavery for years.
Moreover, in one of the early powerful scenes where a perfectly lovely civilised couple is shopping for slaves, who are standing stark naked men and women together like cattle, the lovely gentleman really wants to take as a slave the woman together with her two children but simply can’t, so instead of just not taking her at all he chooses to take her without her children even though the slave trader tells him straight that the girl will be sent to prostitution – and that was the nice guy!!! He really wanted to help but it was not his problem so he simply couldn’t give up that woman no matter what were consequences. It made me think about us modern consumers buying cheap cloths made in Bangladesh and India and we already know the conditions these cloths are made of, we know they are made in sweatshops by young children but we continue to buy because it is cheap it is convenient and Bangladesh and India are too far away for us to really factor the people that live there to our daily shopping.
The movie reaffirmed my view that mankind is inherently evil, just as it is said in Genesis. The slave owner kept saying slaves are his legal property and therefore he can do as he sees fit, including beating and raping. But just because someone is allegedly inferior to you or you see them as your property does not mean you need to be cruel and evil to them, they can work for you (not paid of course, hey they are still slaves) you can give them food and bed and that is that you don’t have to go the extra mile and also be evil to them. But we can see that throughout history, in state of war when people can they are cruel to those deemed inferior to them just because they can. During the Holocaust Jews were demonised and in occupied countries civilians went the extra mile to hurt them well beyond the duty to the Nazi regime, just because they could and were legally allowed. During wars in distance places we saw soldiers from the west committing horrendous acts just because it was far away and they were the ruling power in that area and basically because they could.
I was a bit afraid of watching this movie because I knew it would be a brutal one, but isn’t that the whole point of reading books and watching movies? To learn something, to expand your horizons otherwise we stay ignorant and watch only light entertainment (nothing is wrong with light entertainment, I am all in favour but not only) we can’t allow people to ignore horrors of the Holocaust, Rwanda or current atrocities in the Middle East just because it is too difficult to watch, we need to engage, learn and try to change. Obviously my conclusion from the movie is that nothing is changes and people still commit horrendous acts to others if they deemed inferior or weaker – but we have to try!
On a slightly lighter note, I loved the fact that Brad Pitt produced this movie and gave himself the role of the only positive white man – the man that saved the protagonist.
It is a very good movie and an important one but if the visual is hard for you maybe the book would be a better way to get educated.
einatsohar 