True Stories 27: 10s—12 Years a Slave

From last week’s wild ride of The Wolf of Wall Street to a movie that you couldn’t—on any level—categorize as “fun.”

And when you think about it, it’s pretty easy to categorize movies into two broad categories of “fun” and “meaningful” isn’t it?

“Fun” doesn’t just mean comedies—fun can be dramas where the heroine goes back to her hometown and discovers the love of her life or horror films that are played for kind of ‘soft’ creepy, to sci-fi that isn’t about interplanetary war or something but is about characters who have an adventure.

And “meaningful” doesn’t just mean boring. I say this because the minute a film isn’t “fun” a lot of people will dismiss it. Face it, audiences go to movies to be entertained and comedies, light thrillers, and fun dramas do that in spades. But the minute you get serious with your subject matter, a lot of people will be turned off.

Take a look at a trailer for the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYYtS9KSWNg

The film won just about every award possible. It was about a very serious subject. It wasn’t fun. And yet audiences worldwide showed up in droves.

Sometimes a story has such resonance that it captures something for almost everyone. It’s interesting that the filmmakers of this very American story are British. The driving force in this film came from Britain, not America.

Why is that?

Sometimes stories closest to us are hard to tell. They’re painful to acknowledge. This can be true of countries just as it can be true of individuals. What is the most shameful thing you’ve done? Could it be the subject of a film if everyone knew you had done this despicable thing? Could you write that? Chances are, someone else might write it better because they have the advantage of distance, of perspective. So it’s understandable that this film about American slavery came from Britain.

As with all “true” stories, there’s always the question of what’s true and what isn’t. I think an audience wonders about this, too, as they watch a film based on a real person. If you’ve seen the film, I’d encourage you to take a look at this IMDB page that lists some common questions viewers have about the veracity of the film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024544/faq?ref_=tt_faq_2#fq0044248

This is a good example of a film that stays very close to the actual truth of the story it tells. And no amount of drama or character development was sacrificed to give us that truth. The writer infused the true story with real life—and it’s a gripping film to watch.

Next week, another film about a real person, Stephen Hawking—The Theory of Everything.

Copyright © Diane Lake

11Dec22

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com