A Very Realistic Film About Slavery

12 Years A Slave. A film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt. Directed by Steve McQueen.



     "Every plantation is a little community," John C. Calhoun, a pro-slavery senator said in the U.S.A. in the 1840's, "with the master at its head who concentrates in himself, the united interests of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative."
     This of course is nonsense and the film '12 Years a Slave' shows us why. At the film's beginning. Solomon Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a happy man, father of two with a loving wife and he's a talented violinist. He lives in New York state. Of course, he's black and therefore targeted by kidnappers. This is the U.S.A. in the 1840's exactly when Calhoun was sounding off about the virtues of the slave plantations.
      Suddenly Solomon is in chains and sent to plantations in the U.S. south where slavery is legal. He is now a slave working on cotton plantations.This shift from freedom to slavery is traumatic.
     Director Steve McQueen show us the hideous side of slavery. We see whippings, lynchings, rapes and endless cruelty which  white men and women inflict on black slaves. '12 Years A Slave' is the absolute opposite of 'Gone With The Wind', the film that romanticized the U.S. South under slavery.
     "I've had a difficult time these past several years," Northup says when he's at last re-united with his family. His story, by the way, is a true one. He's the lucky one, despite his sufferings. Left behind, are still millions of black slaves toiling in the American south.
     But Northup does not forget these people and in the end their slavery ended. From 1861 to 1865 the U.S. North fought the slaveholding South in a vicious civil war and won. At war's end, slavery in the U.S. was finally abolished. '12 Years A Slave' shows us the horror of slavery and why it had to end. It's a very fine film.
    
    

Second review of 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour'

    'Blue Is The Warmest Colour' Starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydous. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. French with English subtitles.


    I don't usually add on anything to a review I've written. Yet the preceding review doesn't do complete justice to the film 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour'.
     This is a film about lesbians and lesbian love. At one point in the film when Adele played by Adele Exarchopoulos goes off from her school with Emma played by Lea Seydous, she comes back to the school at another time and gets harassed by her schoolmates. They think she's a lesbian and they're right.
      Now I don't know how many women are  lesbians. Yet I know one thing: I've seen many films and rarely do they show two lesbians having a love affair. At this point I'm sure there are quite a few films where women fall in love with each other, but I haven't seen any of these films show up at local theatres.
     So though I still think that 'Blue Is the Warmest Colour' is way too long I think also it's an exceptional film. I also hope that one day we'll see many films showing men falling in love with each other. That's another set up that doesn't show up at local theatres, too often if at all, and it's time that it did.
      "People aren't going to be going to local theatres too much longer to see movies," a friend of mine said recently. "They'll be watching them on their cell phones, i-Pods or computers." That's probably true, but wherever people watch films in the future I hope they'll be able to see films about gay and lesbian lovers.
    If ' Blue Is the Warmest Colour' helps make that happen then it'll have done a good job of  opening the eyes of movie star moguls to the idea that movies about same sex lovers can be popular.

A LONG FILM WITH LOTS OF SEX

 'Blue is the Warmest Colour'. Starring Adele Exarchopolous and Lea Seydous. Directed and written by Abdellatif Kechiche. In French with English sub-titles.


   Why is blue the warmest colour? Because when Emma played by Lea Seydous first sees the younger Adele, played by Adele Exarchopoulos, Emma has dyed her hair blue. While at the film's end, Adele goes to Emma's art show wearing a blue dress. Blue turns on both women, or at least one of them. Got it?
     In between these times and spread out over four or five years, the older Emma and the younger Adele fall in love, make love and then fall out of love.
     "I want something concrete," Adele tells Emma's parents as all four eat a luxurious meal of oysters. Emma's parents are far richer than Adele's. At Adele's home, her parents usually serve up spaghetti at meal time. Emma's parents don't mind that their daughter's going to be a visual artist. Adele's folks want Adele to have a steady job like teaching which Adele takes up. Adele isn't a French intellectual; Emma is.
     The heart of 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour' are two long scenes, stretching out over 30 minutes where Adele and Emma make love. At film's end, Adele still hungers for Emma who's moved on to another woman. Adele is like many people who get obsessed with their first love.
      "Are you an athlete?" a young French woman once asked a visiting American who said she didn't smoke. "In our country only athletes don't smoke." Emma and Adele smoke all the time and they're not athletes. Yet in the lovemaking scenes they perform with athletic skill.
    Yet there's another side to this film which is interesting. The film also shows us life in the  small French city of Lille. We see political demos, music festivals, intellectual get togethers, art shows and gay clubs. The film  also spends some time in Adele's classrooms, where she teaches the very young.
    These things don't usually pop up in most North American films. So director Abdellatif Kechiche, a Franco-Tunisian,  has written and directed an interesting flick. Yet this film clocks in at 179 minutes and is way too long. At times it can bore you to tears. Yet then again, there are those love scenes..