Immigration as a family trying not to lose the child. Earnest and on their side.
The review
The Mousekewitzes leave a pogrom, not a mood. Fievel falls off the ship and spends the film trying to rejoin a mother and a father who did not abandon him. The new world has cats, con men, and a labor that is not the postcard. The hope is not canceled. It is made specific: a family in one place.
Sentimental, and the sentiment is attached to the right object. A child can watch it. An adult who has ever lost sight of a small person in a crowd will recognize the pitch of the voice.
Keep it for adults who can bear it. A free man, a paper, a wife and children, and a country that called the theft law.
The review
Solomon Northup was a citizen of New York with a wife, children, and a trade, and the United States allowed him to be sold. The film's discipline is to stay with the time. It does not offer a white savior as the meaning, though a man finally carries a letter. The meaning is the letter, the name, and the fact that the law had to be contradicted by a person willing to act. Patsey's suffering is not there for our refinement. It is there because leaving her out would be another theft.
Adults. Do not put it on as a background of importance. If you watch it, watch it through, and do not follow it with a cheerful picture the same night. The charge is not a feeling. The charge is to know that a legal theft is still a theft, and to be the person who carries the letter.
