A Portion of the Themes in "12"

In the movie 12, many themes were evoked, oftentimes simultaneously, in such a way that kept you unable to predict exactly what was going to happen next, or what you would encounter in the end. The way that different sometimes contrasting ideas were portrayed such as prejudice, resistance, context in morality, and freedom, forced the audience to evaluate the issues to a much greater degree.

I pulled a couple of very interesting themes from the movie, but perhaps the most profound way that my perspective was changed had to do with the concepts of responsibility and freedom. The jury first encountered this dilemma when they were challenged by the inventor who told the story of his stint as physics professor. At the beginning of the movie he effectively conveyed the fact that they were dealing with the life of a human being, and that in instances where the quality of one’s life can be destroyed, careful evaluation must take place and the responsibilities that accompany decisions like the one they have to make are great. It also portrayed the way that freedom is influenced by the way that we are brought up, we never are truly free. Instead, the center, or our experiences in this case, limit free play. We don’t make decisions based on things that we don’t experience at least some amount of empathy our understanding for. Following this line of thought though, we see that experience, and consequently our perception of understanding responsibility is also shaped.

The way that the actors used portrayed the roles made it all the more convincing. Through small amounts of research in facial micro-expressions, which give insight into emotion, I often watch out in movies to see if the actors are really into the particular parts they are playing. For instance, in the Toy Story movies, they did research to make sure that the toys face reflected what emotions would actually be felt. Through small amounts of analysis in 12, I came to the conclusion that the actors in this movie were quite engaged, and were easily able to portray emotions unique to their story or part. Also, the use of background music was very interesting. It paralleled the way that the story moved for the most part. However, there were a couple of times where what happened next couldn’t be predicted based on the music, they seemed to contrast. This mix of feeling kept the audience unable to predict what would happen next, and kept a check on the audience losing interest or awareness.

In conclusion, this was an excellent movie that reflected many important themes that society faces on a daily basis. The example was fairly radical and had a very low chance of occurring, but it was an extremely interesting portrayal of embracing alternative paradigms that challenge unjustified social norms.