I remember Hemingway writing in the novel The Old Man and the Sea——— "A man is not born to be defeated, you can destroy him, but you can't defeat him." ”
At that time, I was still young and had not experienced many hardships in life, so my understanding of this sentence was not very thorough, and I always felt that it was a contradictory sentence. However, when I gradually calmed down in the tempering of the social environment, I began to truly understand the deep meaning behind this sentence, that is, the flesh can rot, but the spirit can be immortal.
As a small-budget autobiographical film, after the release of "Twelve Years of Slavery", it was hyped up by the mainstream media, and the main reason here is still concentrated on the "political correctness" of the theme selection. Just as "Forrest Gump" beat "The Shawshank Redemption" to win the Oscars that year, "Twelve Years of Slavery" also won the 86th Academy Award.
Leaving aside the praise of the mainstream media for the collective unconscious because of value-oriented reasons, back to the film itself, the story as a whole is a plot patchwork of interludes and flashbacks, allowing the protagonist Solomon to switch between the free body and the slave body, and the timeline at this time also returns to the 19th century American Civil War period.
Although the film has such a grand historical background as a support, the director does not focus solely on exposing or criticizing the ugliness of black slavery, because, within the scope of what is known, this repetitive criticism will seem a bit redundant.
Therefore, in the plot promotion centered on such an ordinary character as Solomon, it slowly connects other characters of the same class or different classes of the same era, and then, in the same environment, slowly peeks into the numbness or sobriety of self-knowledge and self-salvation under the big cage of society.
Deliberately diluting the indictment of the historical background and social system, instead focusing on the individual, and taking advantage of Solomon's twelve years of imprisonment after being lured, it shows a socially alienated sentient being.
It is in this rather depressing and desperate atmosphere that the film slowly withdraws from the remaining spiritual core. I think that even if the audience has already guessed the ending, this does not prevent Solomon from self-redemption after puncturing the disguise of human selfishness and numbness.
In my opinion, the so-called freedom is not a slogan, the so-called redemption is not a cry, they should be a firm faith and an indomitable spirit. People are always saying that society is changing people, so why not try to make people change society?
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Twelve Years of Slavery is an adaptation of the 1853 autobiographical novel of the same name by Solomon Northp. Because the novel belongs to the genre of memory themes, and the content is basically a fragmented life of the author, the director deliberately adopts interlude and flashback shooting techniques in order to avoid the narrative in the form of flow accounts, causing the audience to be dull in the process of watching the film.
In the process display of the film to the end, there are blank spaces for people to reflect on everywhere, and the fate of the tortured characters is used as a point of attraction, and under the premise of knowing the ending, through the editing technique of montage, a tense and depressing atmosphere is created, thus mobilizing the audience's viewing emotions.
During the Civil War, black slavery was still very popular in the South, and Solomon was seduced by a well-paid performance, which made him change from a free body to a slave body. During his twelve years as a slave, he suffered not only physical, but also mental.
As the private property of slave owners, Solomon was sold from New York to Washington, d.C., and after losing his freedom, he was arbitrarily slaughtered by whites, while also facing the numbness and cold-bloodedness of his companions.
The transformation of human nature in the context of society is always so fragile and sensitive, and what the director has to do is not to stand on the direct criticism of right and wrong, but to explore self-knowledge and self-redemption in the context at a deeper level.
In the film, Solomon experiences two betrayals in his struggle for his personal freedom.
The first time was on a ship carrying slaves. Originally intended to unite with the other slaves to fight, but was temporarily stopped by his companions on the grounds that there was no disparity in timing and strength. But when he got to shore, his companion, who had previously vowed to fight for his freedom, did meekly snuggle up to his master's chest like a dog when he saw his white master pick him up. This allowed Solomon, who had only lost his freedom for a long time, to see the numbness of human nature and the loss of self.
The second betrayal occurred a few years after Solomon became a slave. The white man who originally thought that he had the same situation as himself would look at the face of the relationship and money between the two and send himself a letter, but unexpectedly, the white man turned around and told the secret to the slave owner. This allowed Solomon, who had lost his freedom for a long time, to see the greed of human nature and the loss of self.
Born in sorrow and died in comfort, I think, this sentence said by the chinese ancestors can be used here. The numbness of slaves and the habits of slave owners have provided fertile ground for the original deformed social environment, and the loss and loss of the self have made the spirit that should have been used as a support for life be discarded again and again.
In this film, the director does not blindly show the misery of the black slaves led by Solomon, or the cruelty of the white slave owners led by Epps. He only uses Solomon's action trajectory to connect various characters in the social environment at that time, and then, through the multi-layered and multi-angle depiction of the humanity of all people in the film, he further spies the human nature that is slowly alienated by the social system and social environment after losing self-redemption and self-recognition.
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In the movie, there are three more representative white people, who represent three groups in the social environment.
The sympathetic Ford was powerless to save Solomon, and although he was also a white slave owner, all he could do was to help Solomon in life or spiritually.
Ford, who was originally in a debt crisis, eventually unconsciously considered in the direction of personal interests, because, in essence, Ford was still a slave owner. The sense of identity and belonging given by society does not allow him to fully reflect on equality and freedom. This way of living with vague self-perception is a kind of compromise and submission to society.
The brutal and fierce Epps never gave softness to black slaves like Solomon, and in his heart, black slaves were equivalent to livestock and were personal private property. This kind of exploitative social system and the lack of restraint and control of the social environment infinitely stimulate the evil of human nature, and eventually let his self-perception be completely lost.
Regardless of whether there are loopholes in the law, he will try to make the system an umbrella that serves the evil of his own human nature, which is a kind of numbness and blind obedience to society.
Bass, the white carpenter, was a skeptic of black slavery and an attempt to change society. He is loyal to the law, but he is also questioning the law, and in his contact with Solomon, Bass slowly changes from a spectator to a participant, which makes him more self-aware, and also tries to redeem himself and redeem others. In my opinion, this is not simply the goodness of human nature, but a kind of break and reshaping of society.
By showing the three attitudes of these three people to face society, the director conveyed such a concept: people's thinking scope and cognitive ability are inevitably subject to social system and social background, but this does not mean that people should give up the promotion of self-knowledge and the pursuit of self-salvation, because society has always been composed of people, and the growth of people's spiritual core is the most important driving force for promoting social progress.
In the movie, Solomon's insistence on the belief of returning home in the past twelve years after he lost his freedom is certainly worthy of people's affirmation, but through Solomon's tragic experience, it reflects the continuous improvement of people's self-knowledge in the context of society, the original intention of not being changed by society, and the continuous self-redemption in reflection, which is the theme of the final expression of the film.
Looking back at history is to be able to see the present and then look to the future.
Although the story of the movie "Twelve Years of Slavery" is set in the prevalence of black slavery in the United States in the 19th century, if we look closely at our current lives, we will find that there are still many people who have become slaves to society in various forms, such as war, such as poverty, such as improper religion...
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The film's calm shooting method always gives people a feeling of suffocation, and the use of a large number of long shots allows the audience to have an immersive sense of reality, as if they are Solomon, experiencing pain and torture.
Such an arrangement, in reverse, forces the audience to hate the various evils of the black slave system when comparing the present, of course, hating the past is not the goal, cherishing the present is the most important.
In this way, the film "Twelve Years of Slavery" won the Oscar award not only because of "political correctness", I think, more because it dilutes the historical and cultural background, so that different people can find emotional resonance in the film, and then, it also extends the thinking about the relationship between society and people.
The film answers the question I mentioned at the beginning by the topic of self-redemption——— society will indeed change people, and distorted social systems will alienate people, but when the improvement of self-knowledge and the growth of self-redemption slowly become a firm belief and indomitable spirit, people can also change society."