12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

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domino harvey
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#26 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 14, 2013 4:41 pm

For what it's worth, Ed Gonzalez' and Walter Chaw's reviews are both bewilderingly off-point, but the film still has its own share of problems that will become clearer once more people see it. I think both reviewers responded to the "lack" felt after watching this average at-best but supposedly life-changing film and were trying to come to grips with what that hole might be missing.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#27 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Oct 14, 2013 5:01 pm

Our film festival here in Philadelphia changed this Saturday's Nebraska screening to another day (when we're already seeing Ti West's The Sacrament), but they replaced it in the time slot with 12 Years a Slave, which wasn't previously part of the lineup at all. So I'll be able to weigh in soon enough with my actual opinion, it's just always a good sign when the 'usual suspects' of contrarianism start nitpicking away at a film that's already gotten its share of excellent reviews. I'm far more bullish on McQueen than most here, so I'm not expecting any surprises, but I look forward to discussing it with you once I see it, Dom.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#28 Post by Finch » Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:36 am

Reverse Shot also pans the film
Three movies into his second career as a feature filmmaker, McQueen has leveraged his obvious skills as an installation artist into becoming the modern master of a certain kind of set piece—the literal show-stopper, in which the movie grinds to a halt to beg our applause. It’s indeed disturbing to watch Ejiofor’s Solomon Northup choking underneath the noose placed around his neck by a brutal plantation foreman (Paul Dano), but it’s also infuriating in a way that exceeds its narrative function. McQueen may intend the sight of a dangling black man as the centerpiece of his grim historical drama, but it’s actually a symbol of his artistic exhibitionism. Powerful as this image is, it conflates the agony of the character with the bravery of the man unflinching enough to put it onscreen.

An adaptation of a best-selling mid-19th-century memoir by Northup, considered one of the most incendiary exposés in American literature, 12 Years a Slave is the sort of bad movie that’s at once easily pegged and difficult to take to task, as its subject matter more or less insulates it from criticism. It’s also the sort of bad movie that has a number of worthy things about it: for example, the plaudits that Ejiofor is getting for his lead performance are entirely deserved. Like Michael Fassbender in Hunger and Shame, Ejiofor has been directed to hold it all in, and his actorly restraint melds with the reticence of a character whose survival depends on withholding nearly everything about himself. Born free in New York, and then drugged and sold into slavery by a pair of high-flown tricksters, Northup is advised by longer-tenured laborers to hide his education and to deny his previous identity, lest the implications of civility unnerve his new masters.
Is this also the first review to criticise Fassbender's performance?
Speechlessness is one response to Fassbender’s work as the petty tyrant Edward Epps; suffice it to say that the only thing to do with a performance this ill-conceived is to nominate it for an Academy Award. Fassbender is a supremely talented actor with a redoubtable sense of loyalty to a director who seems to get off on putting him through the wringer: there is, perhaps, some masochism on the thespian side of the equation here as well. Playing Epps as a rabid man-child may have been cathartic for an actor who’s recently become the go-to guy for smoldering sensuality, and the character’s depravities seem to have been faithfully translated from the source text, but there’s something lazy and distasteful about the way McQueen uses Edwin to personify the slaver’s mentality. In lieu of a plausible—and unsettling—portrait of institutionalized racism and exploitation, we get a bad guy who just keeps checking off boxes: an alcoholic sadist in psychosexual thrall to the petite but unbowed field worker Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), which in turn stokes the bloodlust of his jealous, dead-eyed wife (Sarah Paulson).
McQueen is nothing if not a good liberal, and he stages Brad Pitt’s climatic cameo as a Canadian abolitionist as a blissful idyll. (This is the second movie this year after World War Z where Pitt the producer has gifted himself with a distinctly savior-ish role.) But the formal rigor and aesthetic risk-taking of Hunger and Shame have been downplayed in favor of a more Spielbergian approach: vast establishing shots, sophisticatedly stylized lighting, distractingly recognizable actors in supporting roles (Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano), and music (by Hans Zimmer) slathered all over the image. A lot of the time, the former gallery radical’s film language is utterly conventional, which can be understood as an attempt to make the material more “accessible” for the mainstream audience that the director, and his studio backers, are courting, or as a way of emphasizing the power of the more obviously confrontational sequences. But just as the hanging-tree scene proves doubly uncomfortable for what it shows and the self-conscious brilliance of the presentation, the other money shots—i.e. the single-take scourging sequence where the camera tracks around in a vicious circle that keeps the whip’s impact ever so decorously out of view—end up standing out in an almost distasteful way.


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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#30 Post by solaris72 » Fri Oct 18, 2013 4:36 pm

Reverse Shot wrote:vast establishing shots, sophisticatedly stylized lighting, distractingly recognizable actors in supporting roles (Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano), and music (by Hans Zimmer) slathered all over the image
I've not seen any of McQueen's films and will probably not see this one in theaters, but these critiques are bizarre... Giamatti and Dano are hardly distractingly famous movie stars (certainly compared to, say, Brad Pitt. Even Cumberbatch; he headlined a blockbuster a few months ago, but I wouldn't call him 'distracting') and the rest of the things mentioned in that list simply highlight such basic aesthetic building blocks that it's a major stretch to claim them as notably "Spielbergian."

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#31 Post by Matt » Fri Oct 18, 2013 4:50 pm

But I think if Spielberg had started out making the kind of film art McQueen did, people would be just as surprised by his sudden embrace of "basic aesthetic building blocks."

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#32 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 18, 2013 5:17 pm

solaris72 wrote:
Reverse Shot wrote:vast establishing shots, sophisticatedly stylized lighting, distractingly recognizable actors in supporting roles (Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano), and music (by Hans Zimmer) slathered all over the image
I've not seen any of McQueen's films and will probably not see this one in theaters, but these critiques are bizarre... Giamatti and Dano are hardly distractingly famous movie stars (certainly compared to, say, Brad Pitt. Even Cumberbatch; he headlined a blockbuster a few months ago, but I wouldn't call him 'distracting')[..]
It actually is a problematic element within the film. I talk about it in some depth in the piece I was commissioned to write for the non-profit that got me into the screening (which I'll post a link to if it turns up online), but the film notably gives far more fleshed out and memorable roles to its white slave-enablers, and their use within the film is one of several signals as to the actual intended audience for this film. The first half of the movie is an assembly line of notable white character actors-- in addition to those mentioned, Scoot McNairy is the first "Oh, him" white face to pop up early on and a sign that it'll be a pattern for a while-- and it's fair to point out that the most complex and fully-fleshed character in the film, Fassbender's Epps, is white, while all of the black roles, including the lead (despite Ejiofer's terrific attempts to bring something to the role), are only sketched in via representational aspects. This fails as a character piece because we hardly know anything about the central figure that isn't directly related to the needs of the plot. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker in any film, but with this one it makes it increasingly hard to hang a hat on a defense based on performance. Ejiofer would probably be fantastic in Scary Movie 7, that he brings something to so little doesn't mean anything in favor of the film.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#33 Post by Luke M » Sat Oct 19, 2013 3:44 pm

I just came back from seeing it this morning. It lives up to the hype. Calling it the greatest movie about American slavery almost seems like an insult (has there even been a good one?!). It's emotionally raw, not at all manipulative like Spielberg or Ron Howard. I feel like it's a new classic, like the feeling I had after leaving There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men. Not just the best movies of their respective years but of the decade.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#34 Post by knives » Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:21 pm

Luke M wrote:Calling it the greatest movie about American slavery almost seems like an insult (has there even been a good one?!).
Django Unchained most recently.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#35 Post by criterion10 » Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:23 pm

knives wrote:
Luke M wrote:Calling it the greatest movie about American slavery almost seems like an insult (has there even been a good one?!).
Django Unchained most recently.
Debatable.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#36 Post by domino harvey » Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:32 pm

Manderlay

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#37 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Oct 19, 2013 10:29 pm

Nightjohn, directed by Charles Burnett.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#38 Post by dustybooks » Sat Oct 19, 2013 11:05 pm

I like Rosenbaum, but I'm a little creeped out by his repeated insistence in that piece that black audiences can't follow films with dark humor or a "literary structure."

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#39 Post by Clodius » Fri Oct 25, 2013 1:16 am

Just got back from seeing this (finally, stupid films always premiering on Coasts early) and I've got to say, it was excellent. I simply can't understand how ReverseShot would call it a "bad movie" in any way. Does it have some potential problems? I suppose. It is beautifully shot and acted, and apparently plotted from the book relatively consistently however.

I agree with Luke that it is emotional but not maudlin or ploying. While I can see domino's critique that the white actors are more fleshed out, that's a function of the subject (and it also helps in avoiding rank sentimentality). In a film about slavery, the victims are inherently understandable. They don't need as much explanation for an audience to understand them. The real question is how people could subjugate one another, and the exploration of how that occurs. That's the reason for the focus on Epps. I'd of actually appreciated more time spent with Cumberbatch's character, the "lenient" slavemaster, exploring how he deludes himself.

Style-wise, the film was beautiful and had some interesting aspects as well. I saw a fair bit of Malick influence (in the best way) with shots of vegetation and silent shots of characters. I also particularly liked the way certain sound effects played over scenes (the machinery sounds over the riverboat for example, which to me emphasized how the institution of slavery was like machine grinding over human lives).

Oh and stunt casting? I enjoyed Dano and Giamatti but the biggest stunt of the whole cast was Michael K Williams (Omar!) showing up for like 2 minutes. I don't feel like the casting was much of a problem because they were excellent actors across the board (plus is Paul Dano really a big name beyond arthouse lovers?). The biggest problem I did have with the film was that Brad Pitt basically played the "Magical Cracker" role (as opposed to the "Magical Negro" trope).

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#40 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 25, 2013 8:55 am

Clodius wrote:While I can see domino's critique that the white actors are more fleshed out, that's a function of the subject (and it also helps in avoiding rank sentimentality). In a film about slavery, the victims are inherently understandable. They don't need as much explanation for an audience to understand them.
But this is precisely the problem with the film: it rests on its laurels that the audience will immediately be sympathetic to all slaves since slavery is so widely considered to be a bad thing and therefore sees no need to create characters rather than representational ciphers and archetypes. No one is walking out of this film going, "Oh, slavery was a bad thing?" But the film offers little new insight into the system that let slavery thrive and because it doesn't afford rich characterization to its "victims" (your word choice couldn't be more appropriate, which is depressing for reasons other than the filmmakers intended), the film doesn't achieve anything, except give white NPR liberals something to feel guilty about

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#41 Post by Clodius » Fri Oct 25, 2013 10:37 am

domino harvey wrote:No one is walking out of this film going, "Oh, slavery was a bad thing?"
Well first I think you're overestimating the education of the American public. There is a decent segment of people who would basically say that Slavery was bad but not terrible, basically saying that most masters were like Benedict Cumberbatch (whose character name I cannot remember) rather than Epps. That's what makes Eliza's scene talking to Solomon so important.
But the film offers little new insight into the system that let slavery thrive and because it doesn't afford rich characterization to its "victims" (your word choice couldn't be more appropriate, which is depressing for reasons other than the filmmakers intended), the film doesn't achieve anything, except give white NPR liberals something to feel guilty about
But how much do the victims actually have to do with the system? There is a story of human survival in the slavery topic, and while the film does try to address it, the film tackles the system of slavery with much more force. That story of survival is where the victims need to be built up and explained to the audience, whereas talking about the system of slavery requires a focus on those who actually run the system, i.e. the owners.

I really disagree with the conception of 12 Years as a simple white guilt movie. It isn't The Help or something where its "Oppression of minorities is bad, but look the white people got their act together and fixed it! Yay!" I'll still say my biggest dislike is Brad Pitt showing up outta nowhere to save Solomon but I suspect that's actually part of the book and there are few other ways Solomon could of actually escaped.

While there are many problems with this analogy (especially that many people seem to dislike the movie I'm talking about) I'd compare 12 Years to Schindler's List in the way it attacks the system of oppression and those who go along with it. In doing so, Schindler's List makes a Nazi collaborator it's main character, rather than a Jew, in detailing the horrors of the Holocaust. That's because Spielberg was looking at the system underpinning the Holocaust, rather than simply the survival of those who endured it.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#42 Post by jbeall » Fri Oct 25, 2013 10:41 am

Wesley Morris's review on Grantland.com. It's long but worth the read.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#43 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 25, 2013 10:47 am

Clodius wrote:But how much do the victims actually have to do with the system? There is a story of human survival in the slavery topic, and while the film does try to address it, the film tackles the system of slavery with much more force. That story of survival is where the victims need to be built up and explained to the audience, whereas talking about the system of slavery requires a focus on those who actually run the system, i.e. the owners.
So you're arguing that the film does in fact focus on the system and not the slaves? Because 80% of the movie at least is devoted to the slaves and 20% to the masters/enablers, and that the 20% is more interesting than the 80% is the entire problem with the film. I don't think 12 Years a Slave is much interested in questioning or even examining the system outside of the slave auction (not coincidentally the most interesting scene in the film) and instead focuses its narrative on being a story of survival featuring a central character about whom we know next to nothing, striving to get back to a family we know even less about. When Ejiofer arrives off the boat and Giamatti sizes him up, we see a several people walking past the docks, not paying any mind whatsoever to the commonplace sight of black people being sized-up and herded like cattle, and had the film followed any of those extras or Giamatti for that matter, we would have seen a more insightful and intelligent study of how this era allowed slavery to exist. Instead we're saddled with a two-dimensional, exasperatingly pure Christ figure who isn't allowed any complex characterization that might complicate the audience's sympathy, and thus the film doesn't function as a character piece or a story of survival since there is no investment beyond simple human investment, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who considers that "good enough"

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#44 Post by Clodius » Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:50 am

domino harvey wrote: Because 80% of the movie at least is devoted to the slaves and 20% to the masters/enablers, and that the 20% is more interesting than the 80% is the entire problem with the film.
domino harvey wrote: The first half of the movie is an assembly line of notable white character actors
?

Seriously though, the movie does more to examine the slave system operating around Solomon than it focuses on the slaves themselves beyond Solomon's basic survival. How many real slave characters are there? I'd say 3 (Solomon, Eliza, Patsey), while we see a rotating cast of overseers and masters who react and interact with the institution of slavery in a variety of ways. I'd agree with you that I'd like to see more of the slave auction, but I'd of liked to see more of Cumberbatch's character as well (Does he know that Solomon is hanging from that tree? He rushes in like he doesn't but is that an act?). What we do see is the way differing people exploit the slave system, some to play out their petty tyrant fantasies (Epps), others to extract revenge (Mrs. Epps), others to ensure that someone at least is below them (Dano's character, Armsby), and still others for pecuniary advantage (Giamatti). Solomon exists as a mirror to reflect those characters upon. There is some complexity that Ejiofer imbues the part, but he exists primarily to be acted upon by these differing slave holders (or observe for the audience). Solomon is also supposed to represent a "good slave" and the indignities still heaped upon him show that the horrors of slavery weren't distributed only to "bad slaves". Also, I don't understand how Solomon is a "Christ figure". He isn't sacrificed to redeem our sins unless you're looking at it in a seriously meta-textual way, and he doesn't always turn the cheek (he beats up Dano's character for instance)

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#45 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 25, 2013 12:00 pm

My quotes do not contradict, so I'm not sure what your point is in question marking them?

He is a Christ figure because he never does anything that isn't noble or forced upon him-- it's weak characterization and I would bet money that in the actual slave narrative Northup owns up to more negative complexities than is afforded him in the film. This is a movie that doesn't trust its audience to be able to sympathize with a complex, human central figure and instead settles for representational presence, a "human"

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#46 Post by Clodius » Fri Oct 25, 2013 12:17 pm

domino harvey wrote:He is a Christ figure because he never does anything that isn't noble or forced upon him-- it's weak characterization and I would bet money that in the actual slave narrative Northup owns up to more negative complexities than is afforded him in the film. This is a movie that doesn't trust its audience to be able to sympathize with a complex, human central figure and instead settles for representational presence, a "human"
Well, excepting for beating the shit out of Paul Dano (though it seems like everybody likes to do that, from DDL to Hugh Jackman) and he does show some arrogance, in both his handling of Paul Dano before they fight and also his conversation with Eliza (who shuts him down). Honestly, being a good guy who keeps his head down doesn't automatically equate to Christ figure in my conception. I'm not going to argue that the Solomon character was somewhat flimsy, he was. Ejiofer's performance brings some depth in my view, but as I mentioned before, Solomon is the mirror that reflects the culture and attitudes of the slave owning south. To some degree its good that Solomon isn't over developed because it means the audience doesn't take this as a super unique case (i.e. "Oh Epps was only acting that way because of Solomon's character" etc). The movie is an indictment of slavery as a whole, and as such it has to be able to be cross applied.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#47 Post by warren oates » Fri Oct 25, 2013 12:21 pm

Just what are we supposed to see Solomon Northup do that would make him human in italics as opposed to quotation marks?

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#48 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 25, 2013 12:34 pm

Clodius wrote:Well, excepting for beating the shit out of Paul Dano (though it seems like everybody likes to do that, from DDL to Hugh Jackman) and he does show some arrogance, in both his handling of Paul Dano before they fight and also his conversation with Eliza (who shuts him down).
You gotta be kidding me, the Dano-beating was a pure audience-pleasing moment! I don't decry it for working on that level (and the film undercuts the minor, foolish victory by following it with the hanging sequence), but it doesn't function as character complexity either! Warren Oates, any recognizably human traits that aren't simply endearing to the audience (such as the above) would be indicative of the character being fully-fleshed. I used human in quotes in reference to my earlier assertion that the only dramatic pull his character creates is the generic "human" one forced by watching anyone endure the trials he encounters (we pull for any underdog to pull through, etc), but they don't make him recognizably human in terms of breadth or depth of characterization

It's worth reiterating that I didn't hate this movie (I found it of average quality on the whole), I just am already sick of hearing about how its changed the game with its depictions of slavery. Ha, no.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#49 Post by warren oates » Fri Oct 25, 2013 12:45 pm

Hmm. The audience I saw it with gasped in horror when he started beating Dano, I'm guessing because we collectively knew what was coming next for him, that this was no Tarantino revenge fantasy, that it couldn't possibly end well for Solomon.

How's simple pride for a recognizably human trait? For me that's what Solomon's personal arc is about. His slow painful realization that he's no different from any of the other slaves on a number of levels. The white masters don't treat him differently just because he's educated -- and certainly not when it counts. The law doesn't recognize the injustice of his situation. He himself goes from viewing his enslavement as a crime against him to viewing slavery as a crime against humanity. That's what that beautiful moment where he quietly joins in singing the spirituals with the others is about for me, a personal recognition and public acknowledgement of this new humility and deeper humanity.

If you needed more backstory and character relatability for this one, I'm predicting you're really going to loathe All Is Lost.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#50 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 25, 2013 1:00 pm

warren oates wrote:That's what that beautiful moment where he quietly joins in singing the spirituals with the others is about for me, a personal recognition and public acknowledgement of this new humility and deeper humanity.
Which I read as a moment of giving in and giving up, a soul-death as he becomes part of instead of apart from the others. It is an interesting moment, but I think we got different things out of it.

And my audience unreservedly and vocally took great joy in the Dano beat-down. I can resolutely say nothing elicited any noise in way of response of me for the entirety of the film save an appreciative chuckle at Giamatti's "length of a coin" remark. I wish it had. I very much wanted to be moved, either with or against the film, but it just didn't do anything.
If you needed more backstory and character relatability for this one, I'm predicting you're really going to loathe All Is Lost.
Again, my problems with the representational characterization are specific to this film and its aims and not all films. I haven't seen the Redford movie but I have no reason to think or know if such obstacles will be a hindrance or not until I see that specific film. In this specific movie, the one now under discussion, the lack of characterization for black characters in favor of white characters is problematic for me. When I think back of this film I can vividly recall Fassbinder's complex and troubling performance, Brad Pitt's Mennonite/Quaker figure, Sarah Paulson's tanty-pitching plantation wife, but when it comes to the slaves themselves, they are a blur. It would not have been hard to give them personalities, complexities beyond whore and saint and diligent worker, but the film isn't interested. And based on the overwhelming positive response, clearly it worked in their favor. But the end scene of reconciliation is particularly unearned in its emotional pulls, as we know literally nothing about his family, despite them being so important in his life as to merit this concluding sequence. The wife cooks. That's it. That's all we know. Would it have hurt the film to offer even one minute of characterization to his family so as to earn some small part of that finale? But that's the issue with the film: I ended the movie knowing about as much about the central figure as when it started, and that's not a journey.

The earlier invocation of Schindler's List is an apt one: at the time of release it was anathema to speak out against Spielberg's Holocaust drama. Now it seems the populace is at best split 50-50 on its merits. It's impossible to predict what films remain relevant going forward, but I can't in my heart or mind believe this will fare much better too far into the future.

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