When a movie about slavery starts with the disclaimer of “Based on a True Story”, there are always fears of exaggeration, melodrama, and emotional manipulation that films ranging from Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad” to Edward Zwick’s “Glory” have all been guilty of, but “12 Years a Slave” does no such thing. “12 Years a Slave” comes with a story that is just ripe for the Hollywood glamorization treatment and could have easily taken that road, but in the hands of British director Steve McQueen, it will surely go down as one of the greatest anti-slavery movies of all time.
As Quentin Tarantino proved with “Django Unchained” last year, even a tough subject such as slavery can be turned into a mainstream box office hit if handled in a certain way but Tarantino’s uber-violent action flick cannot come even close to the resonating power of the harrowing and unflinchingly realistic “12 Years a Slave”. A much more palatable film experience, “Django Unchained” generally occurs in a fantasy world of over-the-top action and wise-cracking characters that exchange witty banter in between trying to kill each other, but “12 Years a Slave” holds nothing back and paints no such fairytale picture. “12 Years a Slave” is not an easy movie to watch and those looking for a two hour diversion that can be instantly forgotten will go somewhere else, a fact that may prevent it from achieving the commercial success of “Django Unchained”.
A free black man in 1840s pre-civil war America, Solomon Northup is a wealthy and prosperous member of the community along with his wife and two children but in an instant, all that is taken away from him. Finding himself inexplicably in chains, Solomon realizes soon enough the horrible fate in store for him. In the first of many gut-wrenching scenes, Solomon takes the full brunt of a slaver’s hatred and anger that all slaves of that era experienced time and time again. Struggling to figure out how to survive, Solomon is initially torn on whether to fight back and risk it all or suffer in silence and wait for the right opportunity. Solomon gets shunted off from plantation owner to plantation owner, finding difficulty in suppressing his nature and exhibiting a staunchly defended indignant defiance that gets him in hot water on multiple occasions. Initially in the service of Ford (Cumberbatch), a kind but weak plantation owner, Solomon eventually ends up in the hands of the vile and despicable Epps (Fassbender).
The sense of injustice at what happens to Solomon and all of these other slaves is what makes a film like this hard to digest. Even to those desensitized by violent video games and movies, it is the brutal nature of the violence and the harsh and terrible injustices on display that make “12 Years a Slave” so unforgettable. We watch as slaves get whipped on a daily basis for failing to pick a certain amount of cotton, but when a white man also fails to do so, he simply gets told not to do it again. We watch as a slave girl whose children have been taken away from her get told to stop wailing and that they will soon be forgotten. And the most horrifying thing about it is the status quo business-as-usual nature of all those terrible proceedings. The film captures the general sense that slavery is just something that has always been done, something that is ingrained in the culture of the land, and we soon begin to see why people who still feel that something is terribly wrong with all this (such as Ford) are afraid to rock the boat and just allow it all to happen. And it is that bizarre and tragic rationalization that is at the heart of the terrible endeavour of using slave labour that the film takes on as well. We witness how society’s key concepts of justice and morality become twisted and perverted, and the hypocrisy of those using religion to rationalize and gloss over their horrendous actions. Both of Solomon’s masters preach scripture and extol the “good” teachings of the Bible, but while Ford and Epps are complete opposites in almost every respect, both of them hypocritically ignore those very teachings.
The irrational and all-consuming hatred of the slavers, plantation owners, and overseers that Solomon encounters pulsates through the screen, vividly brought to life by a cast that all excel in their roles. Michael Fassbender taps into the dark and ugly recesses of human nature for his role as a lustful and violent man who becomes drunk on the power he holds over his small group of slaves that he proudly exclaims “are his property”. Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, and Sarah Paulson capture the shocking indifference of generations of racist Americans and their blatant disregard for another person’s basic right to their humanity. And in the midst of it all is a once in a lifetime performance by British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, previously known for his great performance in the underrated “Dirty Pretty Things” and supporting roles in “American Gangster” and “Children of Men”. The powerful yet suppressed emotions of anger and fear, boiling under the surface and threatening to erupt at any moment, are the best aspects of Ejiofor’s character, a performance that takes on the whole spectrum of human emotion. He is a man who refuses to give up his dignity and tries to hold on to every shred of it as possible. And in order to survive over the years, he has to discard, piece by piece, almost every fragment of his humanity; his freedom and survival come at a terrible price. We see him beaten and degraded, yet he remains combative and defiant. There are moments where he gives in to his fears, where he begins to question if his humanity exists anymore, but it isn’t some great speech or some one big heroic act that makes Ejiofor’s Solomon so inspiring. It is the little nuances that grip your attention, it is his constant and unwavering willingness to try and cling to his dignity and his humanity inspite of everything that has happened to him and all the terrible things that he has done that make it such a powerful role.
Steve McQueen, director of Hunger and Shame (both of which starred Fassbender), has always shown a willingness to tackle difficult and challenging subject matter in the past, but what he has done with “12 Years a Slave” is quite the achievement. The unharmonious juxtaposition of the beautiful surroundings of the Louisiana swamplands and the peaceful and serene plantations of the South with all the violence and human suffering behind it all is what McQueen does best with “12 Years a Slave”. He doesn’t need an emotionally charged soundtrack or false grand-standing performances from his actors; he takes out all the unnecessary frills and simply tells the story and the rest is taken care of. And while the movie does suffer from pacing problems and loses its focus slightly during the second act, it’s hard to believe that another American film will be able to top “12 Years a Slave” in the Oscars race.
Spoilers:
For all the great things in “12 Years a Slave”, it still carries the trappings of a movie made in the Hollywood system and suffers slightly for it. In what is the typical case of historical revisionism in a Hollywood movie about slavery, the vindication of the black character or characters is usually due to the benevolent kindness of a white man who goes against his peers and decides to treat the black characters as human beings. Standing in as apologists for white people in modern day America, good examples of this are Matthew Broderick’s Colonel Shaw in the aforementioned “Glory” or Schultz in “Django Unchained”, where the white German played by Christoph Waltz rescues the black character, gives him his freedom and teaches him the tools of his trade. Brad Pitt (who perhaps unsurprisingly is also one of the producers of “12 Years A Slave”) plays the role of progressive white man and saviour this time and it is interesting and worth noting the persistent narratives and character hierarchies that certain Hollywood movies about sensitive subject matter tend to stick to.
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Movie info:
Runtime: 133 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Benedict Cumberbatch
Director: Steve McQueen
Screenplay: John Ridley
Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt
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