September 15, 2010: I Am Slave
I Am Slave is a British film which examines the modern-day first-world slave trade from the angle of a fictionalized retelling of a true story. In real life, Mende Nazer actually went through the ordeal of being kidnapped from her tribal home in Africa and shipped to the middle east to be a servant for a wealthy family. They threatened to kill her family if she attempted to escape. When she proved too much trouble for the woman of the house, she was sent to live with a relative of the wealthy family in England, where she again had to work as a servant with no compensation, effectively as a slave. While her father spent years searching for her, she tried desperately to escape, finally managing to enlist the help of a passerby who was from the same part of Africa and understood her plight.
I found myself respecting this film as I watched it, since to “enjoy” it wouldn’t be appropriate, but it didn’t hold up very well when I started to analyze it. As a vehicle for bringing awareness to this appalling practice, it is effective, but as I’ve noted previously, I think spelling it out with an individual case doesn’t make the point as well for me as does a documentary approach detailing the massive numbers of people affected. The filmmaking craft is competent in I Am Slave and it’s definitely a story worth telling, but the film can’t do much more than sketch a quick picture, and Wunmi Mosaku’s expressive eyes and face do the best possible job, but I have to imagine that the book contains considerably more detail and would be more rewarding.
Slick production but should be documentary.
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