12 Years a Slave / YMMV

Accidental Aesop:
- If you go on a trip, make sure to tell your family where you're going in case something goes wrong.
- Be wary of people who promise you something valuable, because they could potentially be not what you think they are. Solomon chooses to trust total strangers with his welfare, and it goes horribly wrong with him being drugged and sold into slavery.
Adaptation Displacement: Based on the real Solomon Northup's memoir of the same name, which was published in 1853, a full 160 years before the movie was made.
Alternate Character Interpretation: Epps' actor, Michael Fassbender, has a rather disturbing interpretation that Epps is actually in love with Patsey and abuses her because he doesn't know any proper way to express it.
Angst Aversion: While its quality as a film is unquestionable, and while it's certainly an unflinching look at the horrors of slavery, some people find the pain and cruelty so overwhelming as to make the film nearly unbearable.
Award Snub:
- Despite winning the majority of the awards from the critics' circle and the Screen Actors' Guild, Lupita Nyong'o lost the Golden Globe and the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress to Jennifer Lawrence for her performance in American Hustle. It doesn't help that there was a rivalry between the fans of the two actresses on who wins at the Oscars. Averted, later on, when Lupita won the Oscar, though the same can't be said for Chiwetel Ejiofor (who won the BAFTA) and Michael Fassbender's highly acclaimed performances.
- An actual snub did occur with Sean Bobbitt's cinematography, which was surprisingly omitted from the final line-up.
- Hans Zimmer's Score was also expected to reap a nomination, but ended up getting left off (made all the more notable because he was eligible for Rush, too).
Awesome Music: Hans Zimmer outdoes himself again. The trailer alone makes haunting use of his score from The Thin Red Line.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The slaves coming across the group of Native Americans. It's never brought up again, nor a part of the story. The point was made however: two groups hindered and pained by the same one. No words needed to be said; their faces said it all.
Catharsis Factor: After all the horror Solomon has gone through, the moment he's freed is spectacularly reliving, especially seeing a bastard like Epps being told off as he tries to process the situation and take him back.
Complete Monster:
- Edwin Epps is a chilling, living example of the utter horrors of slavery and all that it entails. Epps runs his plantation with an iron fist and any slave who picks less than 200 pounds of cotton a day are given many lashes. Succeeding is no guarantee of safety, as Epps is liable to fly into violent furies when he's drunk, or just because he wants to hurt someone. Epps forces the slaves out of needed sleep to force them to dance for his amusement in a parody of a Gentleman's Ball and focuses especially on a beautiful slave named Patsey who he calls his Queen Of The Field for her talent with cotton-picking. Epps repeatedly rapes her, saying he can do what he wants with his property. He also flies into jealous furies over Patsey and later in the film forces Solomon Northup to whip her by holding a gun to Solomon's head. Losing patience, Epps simply takes the whip from Solomon and lashes into Patsey until her back is cut to bloody shreds. And when Solomon is revealed to be a free man, he can only think of the monetary loss this means to him.
- Theophilus Freeman hosts a large slave auction, representing the worst of the business side of slavery. Selling mass quantities of slaves to the wealthy, children included, Freeman shows how petty he can be when he sells the slave Eliza's son despite her pleas, then spitefully separates her from the rest of her kids. Freeman even plans to prostitute Eliza's 8-year-old daughter after taking notice of her "beauty".
Harsher in Hindsight: Patsey getting raped is even worse when one considers that her actress Lupita Nyong'o was violated by Harvey Weinstein, and that the career that propelled her into a Hollywood star would also make her come into contact with him.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Both Chiwetel Ejiofor (Solomon) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Mister Ford) have played in roles where they were engaged/married to Keira Knightley's character (the former in Love Actually and the latter in The Imitation Game).
- The two also appear together in Doctor Strange (2016), where Ejiofor's character is a mentor to Cumberbatch's, a far cry from their roles in this film.
Love to Hate: The Epps are portrayed as an unabashedly vile pair who ooze hate and cruelty.
Moral Event Horizon: The brutal and abusive treatment towards the slaves, with a few noteworthy examples of the horizon being crossed:
- John Tibeats crossed it by sabotaging Northup's hard work and antagonizing him, to the point where Northup's retaliation is so satisfying to watch. It doesn't end there; Tibeats and the other staff members try to hang him to death, but fail and leave him tied to a tree to suffer slowly and painfully. Ford sees this and is horrified, even selling Northup in order to save him.
- The bounty hunters crossed it by lynching and hanging two slaves. They let Northup go (with an added kick), but they showed him that had they not been merciful to him, he would've joined them.
- Edwin Epps crossed it numerous times throughout the movie, such as raping Patsey and his callous disregard towards his slaves' lives. The most evil things that Epps did were spurred by sheer pettiness, such as chasing Northup with a knife when he heard him talk to Patsey and forcing Northup to whip Patsey while threatening to shoot him and the other slaves if he didn't. When Northup is overwhelmed with guilt, Epps snatches away the whip and beats the poor woman until her back is covered in Gorn.
- Mrs. Epps crosses it by physically abusing Patsey to the point where she starts crying in pain and subjecting her to Eye Scream, because she was jealous of Patsey for being her husband's sex slave. (Not that Patsey had a say in the matter.)
Older Than They Think: Solomon Northrup's story had already been told in a Made-for-TV Movie from 1984 called Solomon Northrup's Odyssey^note, with Avery Brooks as Northrup, and directed by Gordon Parks.
Signature Scene:
- Solomon on his tiptoes for hours on end to avoid hanging to death. It's a metaphor for the entire movie and is disturbing on so many levels.
- Patsey's brutal whipping scene.
Tear Jerker:
- The scene when Eliza is separated from her children. It's heart wrenching to hear her scream for her children and to hear her children cry out for her.
- Solomon burning the letter to prevent Epps from finding it, before engraving his family's names onto his violin. It shows how homesick and desperate he feels.
- Every moment of the scene where Epps punishes Patsey. Solomon is forced by Epps to whip her, and he's clearly disturbed at the thought of harming his friend, yet does so anyway. Eventually, Epps gets impatient and threatens to kill him if he doesn't whip her harder, so he tries to whip Patsey as hard as he can, but Epps eventually runs out of patience and whips Patsey in the most sadistic manner possible. The next scene has Patsey crying from the pain covering her bloody, scarred back, while Solomon breaks his violin out of guilt. It becomes even more tear-jerking when you realise that the violin was a gift from William Ford (the only white person who treated him well so far) and he had carved his family's names on the violin as mentioned earlier, meaning that Solomon's hope was destroyed alongside the violin.
The Woobie:
- Patsey. In her first few minutes onscreen, Mistress Epps throws a crystal decanter at her face, and she later claws the spot that she hit on her face. And it only gets worse from there as Master Epps' obsession with her escalates into rape and a particularly brutal whipping.
- Solomon Northup as well, obviously. The misery of slavery alone gets him here, but having to be dragged to such a low after living his life as a free man makes his situation all the more tragic.
- Eliza, separated from her children, is exactly as heartbreaking as it sounds.

YMMV / 12 Years a Slave

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