His own child is sick at home, and the neighbor's call still comes.
The review
A doctor is called to a neighbor's child while his own child is sick at home. He has to choose the order. Griffith, a reel, and a house can watch it. I won't linger on the children. The work and the household collide. I felt the collision in the choice, and I won't invent a speech to make it prettier.
The neighbor is owed a doctor. His own house is owed a father. The reel will not let him be both in the same minute. I sat there and hated the order, whichever call he put first. You cannot answer both rooms at once. The picture leaves him with the order, and I won't invent which room he saved.
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.
