Keep it. Excellence is not a sin. Neither is leaving your family out of the glory.
The review
Bob is dying of a job that forbids him to be what he is, and the film is right that a forced mediocrity helps no one. He is also wrong to sneak, to lie to Helen, and to forget Dash and Violet while he poses. Syndrome is what resentment does with a gift: if I cannot have it, no one will, and I will sell a version of it. The baby, the mother on the jet, the shy girl who has to be visible: the action serves the household instead of pausing it.
A family with children who are good at something should watch this and talk about both halves. Do not dull them. Do not let them vanish into the specialness.
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.
