Film review on 12 Years a slave and Glory

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 60^th. 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.