At the start, you can feel Solomon's childlike joy at a world of freedom and choice in which he can't quite believe he's allowed to exist. Well, the actual first thing you see is his future, enslaved existence - but then you see him happy, and that contrast gives his free life the ominous overshadow of impending doom.
The rest of the movie is brutality and repression, set in an unforgiving land filmed to take full advantage of its alien qualities. The slaves are animals, and even those who seem to have power are nothing compared to the plantation master, whose authority persists - as if by divine intervention - in the face of superior numbers of their slaves, who wear a uniform blankness, the result of institutionalised oppression. There is comfort in the uniform blankness of the dumb herd, and that's something Solomon resists for as long as he can.
The film takes time out for landscapes, but it lives in the close ups. There's a moment near the end where Ejiofor is the only face on screen, not filling it exactly but drifting within the frame, and he seems to be looking right at you. Or is it through you? It's a moment where something seems to leave him. What the film left me with was not sadness but shock, and a vicious imprint of the kind of violence that's brewed by the enforcement of an unnatural order. That's not a flaw but a characteristic of a movie whose protagonist is repressed for a great degree if its length.
It remains extraordinary that a film about such an important part of US history should be made by such British talent, but perhaps it takes an outside perspective to make such a punishing story. The lack of good teeth helps; a trait that's often useful to Brits who wish for roles in American period drama.
The rest of the movie is brutality and repression, set in an unforgiving land filmed to take full advantage of its alien qualities. The slaves are animals, and even those who seem to have power are nothing compared to the plantation master, whose authority persists - as if by divine intervention - in the face of superior numbers of their slaves, who wear a uniform blankness, the result of institutionalised oppression. There is comfort in the uniform blankness of the dumb herd, and that's something Solomon resists for as long as he can.
The film takes time out for landscapes, but it lives in the close ups. There's a moment near the end where Ejiofor is the only face on screen, not filling it exactly but drifting within the frame, and he seems to be looking right at you. Or is it through you? It's a moment where something seems to leave him. What the film left me with was not sadness but shock, and a vicious imprint of the kind of violence that's brewed by the enforcement of an unnatural order. That's not a flaw but a characteristic of a movie whose protagonist is repressed for a great degree if its length.
It remains extraordinary that a film about such an important part of US history should be made by such British talent, but perhaps it takes an outside perspective to make such a punishing story. The lack of good teeth helps; a trait that's often useful to Brits who wish for roles in American period drama.
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