Film review on 12 Years a slave and Glory
What is a Movie?
A Movie
should entertain the watching people. Therefore it needs to have a story which
can be told. It needs to have line it can follow and there have to be a point
when everything changes.
How can Movies help to understand History?
History is
a story which is already been told. It has his ups and down. Is Boring and
exiting. But a Movie can just be exiting. Documentations are mostly boring and
that is the reason why just a few people watch them. But the story needs to be
told, I think we can agree with that. But nobody is interested in boring
History and so we need Movies which are made to be successful for telling the
story of the past.
One of the
hardest parts in the history of the US is the slavery. For the most persons it
isn´t possible to empathize with slaves or with slave owners either. And the
picture of Slavery, that the most persons here in the US have, is made in the
60th. The story was told from a perspective of: “Why is it wrong?”
A Movie has
to capture the feelings of the watcher! And try to think about what happens is
the main character is a slave. Or a slave owner. Or a Soldier. The Movie 12
Years a slave is made from the perspective of a slave. Solomon Northup was a
free man – as we all are in these years – and was sold in to slavery. The movie
shows the process inside him. How it works, how he feels. The watching persons
itself is send to slavery and has to feel everything he feels. The watcher
knows that it is a true story and maybe he knows that the movie was produced
just a few miles from the place where it happened 160 years before.
And just to
stay with 12 years a slave: Try to read the book which was published in 1853
when Solomon was released. Try to make a book exiting for a history class. It
is the same Information – one you have to read, the other to see and to feel.
On the
other hand “Glory” is a totally different kind of movie. This time you have
Soldiers fighting for Slaves. But these Soldiers are black and some of them are
just escaped from Slavery. It is a documentation about the Civil War, made as a
story based movie. You have the feelings of Soldiers, knowing that they have
after war nothing left but still fighting for justice. Colonel Shaw leads a
black regiment in to the battle were more than the half of them died.
A movie is
never as accurate as to be on the place in the time and even not than books or
letters published in that time. They have to be a bit creative. But Movies
based on true stories are in many ways good enough to talk about them.
The question
to talk about is not: are movies a possible way of learning and enjoying
history? But more: Which question do we should ask while watching them? A movie
has much information and is a very good way to understand the thinking of the
time. But just watching the movie as watching a Horror movie because then you
didn´t think about.
