This film affords such a graphic portrayal of man's inhumanity to man that it makes the task of reviewing it very difficult: any words I might use to describe the film's harrowing nature seem to me to be trite, insufficient and empty. It's often said that music goes beyond words but, largely, in this two-hour feature, there is ho film score, a device which renders the audience's witness to brutal flogging and hangings all the more intense. Twelve Years a Slave is monumental in its portrayal of the suffering of Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his fellow slaves. Polarities - literally of black and white, but where white characters represent evil - are bound to make for a strong plot, powerful performances and robust audience reaction (on the way out I heard some people saying the film had made them feel angry). In the sense that there are no grey areas in Twelve Years a Slave and, even though the movie is based on Solomon Northrup's autobiographical book - to my mind the filmic characters lack roundedness. Twelve Years a Slave is politically correct, well-meaning, blockbuster Hollywood at its zenith: no wonder the movie won so many awards. Apart from the intelligent avoidance of a musical soundtrack, it was the sets that demonstrated aesthetic genius, the trees hung with Spanish Moss which acts, retrospectively, in the mind's eye as a frame for the scenes and through which much of the action takes place. For all the movie's not-quite-docu-drama, 120-minute exploration of its subject, it is Billie Holiday's three-minute long, pithy song, 'Strange Fruit' that speaks to me the more eloquently of antebellum misery. Next screenings at the Fourcroft: June 16 - Captain Philips; June 30 - About Time.

R.A.