Movies

No movie of 2013 blasted us with such compelling and emotionally engaging images as “Twelve Years a Slave,” not by a long shot.  I can readily understand the reason that the Academy gave it the Oscar for Best Picture.  It does have some flaws, however.  The bulk of the action happens in the deep deep South, but none of the actors speak with the slow cadences and inflections of that time and place.  Further, very nearly every Black character speaks with the vocabulary and sensibilities of an educated middle class or higher person.  This includes characters who are illiterate and who have never traveled further than 10 miles from their birth place.  Even lower class white people speak in the language of the upper crust.  It is somewhat off putting to have slaves and their cruel overseers speak like academics at a seminar, but I do not claim this as a fatal flaw.  The brutal truth of the story bulldozes through all conventional methods of evaluating movies.  I have an idea that the language comes from the original 19th century book, written by a well-educated and erudite free Black northerner.