My grandfather, Wade Mackie, was a great
civil-rights leader in the Martin Luther King Jr.-era south of Louisiana.
So when Roots
came out when I was a little kid, I think I sort of inherently “got it.”
The TV miniseries certainly still hit me over the head like
a sledgehammer. I’ll always remember Kunta Kinte’s plight and will always feel
bad for all slaves and puzzle over how some people can be so downright bad, or
at the very least clownishly imbecilic, with a big dose of sadistic. It’s still
happening all over the world today. Unfortunately, slavery in some way will
probably always be happening.
So then Django
Unchained was released. With Argo,
that was my favorite movie of 2012 (in fact, I named it my 67th
favorite movie of all time). This attacked Roots-era, pre-Civil War-era
slavery with an eye for how violent it was and how ruthless. It added a huge
dose of Tarantino humor and his style of the unorthodox. Despite that overlay,
it was powerful. That’s why it was so good.
But then along comes 12 Years a Slave.
This blows Roots and Django out of the water. There were loud sobs throughout
the theater. I personally don’t think I’ve cried that hard since E.T.
(seriously, I’m not making light, I always cry during E.T.).
So it’s a sad story, to say the least. It’s on-fiction based
on a book written by Solomon Northup, a wonderful family man and talented and
free musician from Saratoga Springs, New York who was recruited to tour the
East coast in 1841 before getting kidnapped in Washington D.C. He was one of
the few kidnapped slaves to ever escape captivity, which he does after 12 years
at a string of hellish plantations throughout Louisiana.
It will be a crime if Chiwetel Ejiofor, as
Solomon, doesn’t win the Oscar for best actor. This is a very important movie,
and I’m really happy, in my grandfather’s honor, that, at least judging by
Hollywood, we’re getting closer and closer to coming to terms with our
country’s ugly past and moving forward into a much more tolerant understanding
and appreciation of all our differences and similarities.
***** out of ***** stars
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