Solomon Northrup's Oddyssey

[deleted]

I'm talking about the same movie as everyone else, Solomon Northup's Odyssey. I read the book, 12 yrs a slave in the 90's when I was in H.S and once again after the movie brought the story back to public attention and IMO, this movie, Solomon Northup's Odyssey is a joke and an insult to the actual story. For one, they changed the Patsy character into a love starved slave named Jenny, who unlike the Patsy in the book, didn't seem to have any special skill except attracting men. Also, in the book, Elisa was broken and died from depression and the grief of losing her children but in this movie, she seemed more concerned with trading her once pampered lifestyle as a concubine for the life of a servant and seemed to have died after suffering from a mental breakdown due to cultural shock. She never even so much as mentioned her children after they were taken from her. When a caring and concerned Mrs. Epps first notices Elisa's haggard appearance she says "Oh Elisa, you must take better care of yourself" which was laughable and completely out of character for the actual Mrs. Epps. In fact, instead of being depicted as the evil witch that was described in the book, with the exception of one or two minor incidents, she was mostly painted as a reasonable and mild mannered woman. Instead of being obsessed with tormenting Patsy and making her life a living hell due to her extreme jealousy, seemed to be only understandably concerned due to the fact that the Patsy in this movie seemed to enjoy Epps' advances. Also in the movie, Epps wasn't even a fraction as cruel and abusive as in the book and actually seemed to have a gentle nature as far as his relationship with Patsy (Jenny in the movie). Instead of rape and molestation they portrayed the relationship between Patsy and Epps as some sort of love affair and threw in a fictional love triangle between Solomon, Epps and Jenny. Then finally, that pathetic ending. Where do I start? The lack of emotion from all of the actors involved was very disappointing. That's the best word that I could come up with to describe that pitiful scene after reading his book and knowing his story. For someone to be enslaved for 12 yrs, away from his wife and children and subjected to so much cruelty and abuse, you would expect the actors, particularly Solomon and Henry B. Northup, to act as if they were overjoyed and ready to explode with emotion but instead, their reaction to seeing each other was more so like two old army buddies reuniting after 20yrs or as if Henry B. Northup was offering Solomon a job promotion. Not at all the reaction that you would expect one would give to someone who has his freedom in their hands. The truly laughable part was Solomon's sudden change in attitude and immediate arrogance towards Epps only seconds after being rescued. He all but told Epps to kiss his ass. One would think that he would have to take a second to collect himself and take in what was happening before he got it in his mind to release such hostility towards someone that he had just seconds earlier, referred to as "massa".

You may be entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to mine.
Arimas, Samira