12 years a slave

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Movie
German title 12 years a slave
Original title 12 years a slave
12 Years a Slave.jpg
Country of production United States ,
United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2013
length 134 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Steve McQueen
script John Ridley
production Brad Pitt ,
Dede Gardner ,
Jeremy Kleiner ,
Bill Pohlad ,
Steve McQueen,
Arnon Milchan ,
Anthony Katagas
music Hans Zimmer
camera Sean Bobbitt
cut Joe Walker
occupation
synchronization

12 Years a Slave ( English , about twelve years slave ) is a British - American historical film drama directed by Steve McQueen in the year 2013 . The film is based on the autobiographical work of the same name Twelve Years a Slave (1853) by Solomon Northup , which is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor . The plot differs in many details from the book. The film won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2014 and Best Adapted Screenplay. Lupita Nyong'o received the award for best supporting actress.

action

1841 Geiger Solomon Northup lives as a free African American , husband and father of two children in Saratoga Springs in the US state of New York . One day he is obliged to make a lucrative performance by two men. After a night of partying in Washington, DC , Northup wakes up chained to the floor. He realizes with horror that he has been drugged and sold into slavery .

Northup is transported by ferry to New Orleans under the name of Platt and sold to the plantation owner William Ford. Northup proves adept at helping Ford build a waterway. He rises in Ford's favor and attracts the envy of the overseer John Tibeats. This bullies Northup until he struggles and beats Tibeats with his own whip. In order to get revenge for the humiliation, Tibeats and his friends hang Northup. Ford can save Northup from being killed by the rope.

To protect Northup, Ford sells him to another plantation run by the brutal owner Edwin Epps. There Northup has to pick 200 pounds of cotton a day , otherwise he will be beaten. The best cotton picker on the plantation is Patsey, for whom Epps develops a strong ambivalent desire despite his wife's disapproval .

Northup finds new hope when he meets Canadian slavery opponent Bass, whom he asks to notify his friends back home. In fact, one day a friend visits him while he is at work, accompanied by the local sheriff . Despite Epps' angry protests, he gets him from the plantation. After twelve years as a slave, Northup returns to his family.

In the credits it is learned that Solomon Northup tried his kidnappers unsuccessfully. He wrote his memoirs, fought slavery for the rest of his life, and helped smuggle slaves into freedom . He eventually died under unknown circumstances.

production

Filming

Filming took place in New Orleans from June 27 to August 13, 2012 with a production budget of $ 20 million. To keep production costs down, much of the filming took place in the New Orleans area - mostly in the south, where Northup was really enslaved at the time. The filming locations included four antebellum plantations: Felicity Plantation , Magnolia Plantation , Bocage Plantation and Destrehan Plantation . One of the plantations in Vacherie is only a few miles from the actual location of the historical event.

In addition, the Columns Hotel and Madame John's Legacy in the French Quarter in New Orleans were used as film locations. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt recorded 12 Years a Slave on 35mm film with a 2.35: 1 widescreen aspect ratio using an Arricam LT and ST. In order to adequately portray the essence of the story, the filmmakers avoided a desaturated visual style that would have created a somber documentary aesthetic .

music

The score for 12 Years a Slave was composed by Hans Zimmer , arranged by Nicholas Britell and recorded by Tim Fain. Even Franz Schubert's String Trio in B flat major D 471 was used as well as the African-American folk -Song Run Nigger Run . The soundtrack album 12 Years a Slave: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture was released on November 5, 2013 by Columbia Records .

publication

The film premiered on September 6, 2013 at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival . The official theatrical release in the United States was October 18, 2013. The German theatrical release took place on January 16, 2014. The film grossed around $ 188 million in cinemas worldwide, including $ 57 million in the United States.

synchronization

The production took place at FFS Film- & Fernseh-Synchron in Berlin. Benedikt Rabanus wrote and directed .

  •  Chiwetel Ejiofor

  •  Benedict Cumberbatch at the 2013 film premiere

  • Screenwriter John Ridley

  • Michael Fassbender at the film premiere in 2013

  • Sarah Paulson at the 2013 film premiere

  • Brad Pitt at the 2013 film premiere

  • Director Steve McQueen

  • Lupita Nyongo

role actor speaker
Solomon Northup Chiwetel Ejiofor Torben Liebrecht
Edwin Epps Michael Fassbender Norman Matt
bass Brad Pitt Tobias Master
Freeman Paul Giamatti Lutz Schnell
William Ford Benedict Cumberbatch Sascha Rotermund
Eliza Adepero Oduye Sanam Afrashteh
Tibeats Paul Dano Timmo Niesner
Armsby Garret Dillahunt Olaf Reichmann
Brown Scoot McNairy Matthias Deutelmoser
Burch Christopher Berry Michael Deffert
Clement Chris Chalk Peter Lontzek
Edward Gregory Bright Tilo Schmitz
Emily Storm Reid Milena Rybiczka
Fitzgerald Richard Holden Hans-Jürgen Dittberner
Hamilton Taran Killam Tobias Nath
John Craig Tate Jan-David Rönfeldt
Jonus Ray John McConnell Hans-Eckart Eckhardt
Mistress Epps Sarah Paulson Claudia Lössl
Mistress Ford Liza J. Bennett Alexandra Wilcke
Mistress Shaw Alfre Woodard Sabina Trooger
Mr. Moon Tony Bentley Matthias Klages
Mr. Parker Rob Steinberg Dieter Memel
Patsey Lupita Nyong'o Rubina Nath
Plantation owner Thomas Francis Murphy Jan Spitzer
Radburn Bill Camp Marco Kroeger
Judge Turner Bryan Batt Frank Röth
sheriff Jay Huguley Florian Krüger-Shantin
Treach Andy Dylan Jaron Lowenberg

criticism

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

International reception

The world premiere took place during the fortieth Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2013. Initial reactions to 12 Years a Slave were consistently positive. The film received the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. The film received particularly high praise for the acting performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor , Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong'o as well as the directing work by Steve McQueen and the screenplay by John Ridley , which is heavily based on the autobiography of the same name by Solomon Northup.

At Rotten Tomatoes , 96% of reviews are positive with a total of 288 reviews. The critical consensus says: "The film is far from being a feel-good film, but the unswervingly brutal view of American slavery is brilliant - and possibly also indispensable - cinema." At Metacritic , the film received a rating of 97/100, based on 48 reviews. CinemaScore rated the film on a scale from A + to F with an A.

Richard Corliss of Time magazine compares the film with exploitation films like Mandingo and Goodbye Uncle Tom ; However, McQueen is not a sensation-seeking, but a relentless artist. McQueen shows the inefficiency of racism when the slave owners wasted the strength of their slaves by whipping them or waking them up in the middle of the night for their own cruel amusements. HitFix's Gregory Ellwood gave the film an “A” rating in an all-round positive review, describing it as a “powerful drama” under McQueen's “bold direction” with the “greatest achievement in Chewetel Ejiofor's career” and also praised the achievements of Fassbender and Nyong 'o as well as Sean Bobbitt's “wonderful” camera work and Zimmer's music; Ellwood mentions the only small flaw in the film that the passage of 12 years is not clear.

The Guardian's Paul McInnes gave the film five stars out of five. Not only is it a great film, but also a necessary one. The reviewers from Spill.com gave the film high recognition, two of the critics even gave it the highest rating, "Better Than Sex". However, the critics agree that it is not a movie that you would watch a second time in the near future. When compared to the television series Roots , reviewer Cyrus stated that Roots was more like the Care Bear movie compared to 12 Years a Slave .

Tim Robey of the Daily Telegraph gave the "remarkable film that pierces the soul" the maximum number of five stars, highlighting Ejiofor and Nyong'o. Serena Davies also found words of praise for the film in the Daily Telegraph, but regretted that McQueen had deviated from the book on several important points, which made the film less effective. According to Tina Hassannia of Slant Magazine , "[t] he typical visual composition and deafening sound design [...] Steve McQueen depicts the excruciating realism of Northup's experiences and the intricate relationships between master and slave, master and master, slave and slave and so on . "

In 2016, 12 Years a Slave was ranked 44th out of 100 most important films of the 21st century in a BBC survey . The year before, McQueen's directorial work was 99th in the BBC's 100 Most Great American Films poll.

German film reviews

The cinema release in Germany was brought forward by a week and took place on January 16, 2014.

Katja Nicodemus considered in her review in Time Twelve Years a Slave as a film that show the "psychological abysses" and the "literal black and white shades of slavery". The film outlines a society that has "emerged from the most appalling atrocities" and questions America's self-image as a nation of freedom and democracy. Since the film has a certain distance to its topic and is not looking for the “seclusion of a period film”, the story is not told “in the epic breath of repression” as in other slavery films. McQueen provides "a kind of cultural catharsis". A “ballet of horror” and “civilizational neglect” are shown in ghostly scenes in a world that is “out of joint”. You can see the “perversion of an American garden fence idyll”; the depicted “outrageous normal madness of slavery” sharpens “the view of current racism” in American society.

Andreas Borcholte praised the performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Spiegel film review, who with his “withdrawn, very intense play” lets the viewer keep the “deeply unsettling initial situation” in mind. In Solomon's eyes, the emotional competition between the loss of dignity and the humiliating need to "subordinate body and mind to an irrational master-human hierarchy" is impressively reflected. His gaze becomes that of the viewer, who looks "from the deceptive security of a supposedly civilized world" onto a "barbarism believed to have been overcome". McQueen's film contains moments of excessive violence, but unfolds its shocking effect in a subtle form: Solomon's fateful journey is told so “pragmatically” that the viewer has “little room for sentimental empathy”. Twelve Years a Slave is indeed a gripping drama, but leaves the framework of a historical narrative and becomes a “general reflection on the value of freedom”.

In her review in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Susan Vahabzadeh praises McQueen's work as a director, who narrates the “arrangement of unsentimental analysis” “in perfectly designed pictures” that always have a “certain coldness”. The film drives the events into the "artificial" and "bizzare" and provides images and scenes that are not easily forgotten.

Verena Lueken writes in her review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that McQueen's film follows “the rules of narrative cinema in a larger historical framework” by unfolding its “true, incomprehensible story”. McQueen almost disregarded the stories of Solomon Northup as his own; possibly this, like the “juicy music” by Hans Zimmer, is “a compromise with the conventions of storytelling in the cinema”. However, Twelve Years a Slave is an extraordinary film that is superior to all the other epoch-making films about slavery with their sentimental transfiguration. McQueen's film allows an “enlightened view of an institution whose perfidy is illuminated to the last”.

In his review of the film in the Stuttgarter Zeitung , Thomas Klingenmaier says that McQueen describes neither the normal case of slavery nor a malfunction of normality in Twelve Years a Slave , but investigates "the perversion within the perversion" - a deprivation of freedom that even goes against the rules of the Violate slavery. McQueen's “images of everyday hell in the south” in the opening part are staged “precisely and sensually”; Solomon's freedom in the final part of the film shows “a juxtaposition of these two concepts of being black within a nation” that “makes your head burst”. Like Borcholte in the Spiegel, Klingenmaier praises the convincing acting performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who never brings impotence and pride to excess, but always plays the schizophrenia of a man who can only survive as a person by pretending to be dull but not dull. to survive in his personality. Twelve Years a Slave is "not an excellently equipped horror cabinet of atrocities", but the film deals with its topic "cleverly".

Awards

Web links

Commons : 12 Years a Slave  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for 12 Years a Slave . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2013 (PDF; test number: 141 793 V).
  2. ↑ Age rating for 12 Years a Slave . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ 12 Years a Slave (2013) - Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 27, 2019 .
  4. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | 12 years a slave. Retrieved September 13, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b 12 Years a Slave (2013). In: Rotten Tomatoes . Flixster, accessed May 16, 2016 .
  6. ↑ a b 12 Years a Slave. In: Metacritic . CBS Corporation , accessed January 22, 2016 .
  7. ↑ 12 Years a Slave (2013). In: IMDb . Amazon.com , accessed May 16, 2016 .
  8. ^ Film Festival: 12 Years a Slave wins Toronto Audience Award . . In: Der Spiegel . August. Retrieved October 13, 2013.
  9. ↑ 12 Years a Slave (2013). Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on March 10, 2015 (English): "It's far from comfortable viewing, but 12 Years a Slave's unflinchingly brutal look at American slavery is also brilliant - and quite possibly essential - cinema."
  10. ↑ 12 Years a Slave . In: Metacritic . August. Retrieved March 10, 2015.
  11. ^ Specialty Box Office: '12 Years A Slave 'Triumphs In Limited Debut; 'All Is Lost,' 'Kill Your Darlings' Open Solid . In: Deadline.com . October 20, 2013. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
  12. ↑ “Indeed, McQueen's film is closer in its storytelling particulars to such 1970s exploitation-exposés of slavery as Mandingo and Goodbye, Uncle Tom. Except that McQueen is not a schlockmeister sensationalist but a remorseless artist. "
    '12 Years a Slave 'and' Mandela ': Two Tales of Racism Survived . In: Time Magazine (Corliss, Richard) . October 9, 2013. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  13. ^ "McQueen shows that racism, aside from its barbarous inhumanity, is insanely inefficient. It can be argued that Nazi Germany lost the war both because it diverted so much manpower to the killing of Jews and because it did not exploit the brilliance of Jewish scientists in building smarter weapons. So the slave owners dilute the energy of their slaves by whipping them for sadistic sport and, as Epps does, waking them at night to dance for his wife's cruel pleasure. "
    '12 Years a Slave 'and' Mandela ': Two Tales of Racism Survived . In: Time Magazine (Corliss, Richard) . October 9, 2013. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  14. ↑ “12 Years is a powerful drama driven by McQueen's bold direction and the finest performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor's career. (...) '12 Years' also features gorgeous cinematography by another longtime McQueen collaborator, Sean Bobbitt, and one of Hans Zimmer's more moving scores in some time. // One minor criticism of the film is that it shockingly fails to convey the passage of time during Northrup's forced slavery. (…) ” Review: Powerful 12 Years a Slave won't turn away from the brutality of slavery . In: Hitfix (Ellwood, Gregory) . August 13, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2013.
  15. ↑ "12 Years a Slave is not just a great film but a necessary one."
    12 Years a Slave: Toronto film festival - first look review . In: The Guardian (MacInnes, Paul) . September 7, 2013. Retrieved October 26, 2013.
  16. ↑ “12 Years a Slave” - Audio Review. Archived from the original on October 27, 2013. In: Spill.com . October 23, 2013. Retrieved May 2, 2019.
  17. ↑ "It's the nobility of this remarkable film that pierces the soul."
    12 Years A Slave, first review . In: The Daily Telegraph (Robey, Tim) . October 17, 2013. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
  18. ↑ 12 Years a Slave: why the book is even better . In: The Daily Telegraph (Davies, Serena) . January 11, 2014. Accessed March 23, 2014.
  19. ↑ "Using his signature visual composition and deafening sound design, Steve McQueen portrays the harrowing realism of Northup's experience and the complicated relationships between master and slave, master and master, slave and slave, and so on."
    Toronto International Film Festival 2013: 12 Years a Slave Review . In: Slant Magazine (Hassania, Tina) . September 9, 2013. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
  20. ↑ The 100 greatest American films at bbc.com, July 20, 2015 (accessed August 24, 2016).
  21. ↑ 12 Years a Slave at tobis.de
  22. ↑ The body fighter . In: Die Zeit , January 9, 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  23. ↑ Slave drama "12 Years a Slave": Free man in chains. In: Der Spiegel , January 13, 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  24. ↑ Final disenchantment. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 15, 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  25. ↑ Break the chain of clichés. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 15, 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  26. ↑ The Nature of Cruelty. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , January 15, 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2014.