The town banned dancing after an accident, and the preacher is grief, not a cartoon.
The review
I had this filed as kids against a scold. A boy from Chicago moves to a town that banned dancing after an accident, and a preacher is the law. The film is sadder than that file. The fight is grief that became a rule. The dance is the protest. By the end the preacher is not a cartoon.
Teens can handle it. A lot of parents will know the songs before they notice the sorrow. Sit with the ban long enough to say what it was trying to keep from happening again. Then watch whether the man who wrote it can hear the town without being mocked into nothing. He can. The music is the argument. The accident is why anyone thought they needed one.
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.
