12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave (2013)

1 corrected entry

(8 votes)

Corrected entry: When Platt is seen standing on a raft and paddling down the river, there is a thick layer of green algae on top of the water. When it cuts to the overheard shot, the water appears clear. Then, when it cuts back to the shot before, the algae appears again.

Elizabeth Mehling

Correction: The three shots are Platt leaving to test his shortcut with log raft, the overhead shot is somewhere along the way, and the final shot is arriving at the destination and thus proving the labor saved with the shortcut. Not all of the swamp needs to be algae covered just because the launch and landing areas are.

Greg B

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Question: I'm hoping this was addressed in the book. Solomon was allowed to work as a violinist and allowed to keep the money he earned, which he attempted to use as a bribe to get another character to send a letter on his behalf. Solomon was also sent into town on several occasions to purchase supplies. Why didn't he just buy and envelope with his own money and send it at the post office? Couldn't he have said it was a letter from his master once it was sealed? Couldn't he write it in code if he couldn't send it sealed? All he had to say was that Solomon Northup was a guest at the plantation and his wife could have alerted the authorities.

Answer: Here's why, according to Northup in Twelve Years a Slave: "My great object always was to invent means of getting a letter secretly into the post-office, directed to some of my friends or family at the North. The difficulty of such an achievement cannot be comprehended by one unacquainted with the severe restrictions imposed upon me. In the first place, I was deprived of pen, ink, and paper. In the second place, a slave cannot leave his plantation without a pass, nor will a post-master mail a letter for one without written instructions from his owner."

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