12 Years a Slave (2013)
Grade: A-
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lupita Nyong’o, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti and Brad Pitt
Premise: A free black man living in New York
Rated R for intense, disturbing thematic material including constant racial slurs and profanity, scenes of beatings and torture, nudity, and a scene of rape
This time every year, it’s hard for serious movie fans to walk into certain movies without gaudy expectations. Why? Because ads reading For Your Consideration are posted all over the Internet, critics lavish affection on movies in lengthy, four-star reviews, and terms like Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture of the Year are thrown around like “please” and “thank you”. This is not only the season to be jolly, but it’s also the time for movies striving to win the coveted Academy Awards to fill multiplexes, usually with tons of advance buzz. So it can be hard to take a movie at face value, to appreciate it for what it is, and not what it “should” be, or what its chances at winning an Academy Award are.
Try as I might, I couldn’t help but bring such expectations into my screening of 12 Years A Slave. Based on a real man’s horrific experience of being kidnapped and forced into the slave trade, where he endured endless prejudice and beatings and mistreatment, when he had a family and a home and a decent living as a free man in upstate New York, 12 Years has already been labeled The Slavery Movie, One of the Most Powerful Movies You’ll Ever See, A Sure Thing for the Oscar, etc… Knowing this, I walked into the theatre braced for an explosive, epic, searing, raw film that would knock my socks off, maybe reduce me to tears, and leave me shaken and changed. Yet 12 Years is not exploitative; it’s not the in-your-face spectacle some have claimed. It’s undeniably powerful, and certainly haunting, but no one will watch the first 10, 20, or even 40 minutes and think it’s the best or most powerful movie ever. Director Steve McQueen’s film builds slowly. It certainly documents moving, powerful moments, and makes all the horrors of the abuse and dehumanization of the slave trade real, but it doesn’t throw it all in your face—no one earns an Oscar within the first five minutes. But McQueen’s real accomplishment is just that: immersing you in the world of slavery, and one man’s nightmarish experience, by showing you How It Was. 12 Years’ greatest achievement might be its matter-of-factness. This kind of material shouldn’t be matter-of-fact, but slavery was back then, and what might be most affecting about the movie is how it has the ability to make each and every audience member think “that could’ve been me. What would I have been like if I’d lived back then?”
Plot
In 1841, Solomon Northup (a quietly-superb Chiwetel Ejiofor; that’s Chew-ee-tell Edge-ee-oh-four) is a free man. He has a house, a wife and two kids, and a great reputation as a gentleman and an expert violinist. When he’s introduced to two men who say they’re part of a traveling circus and need a violin player, he’s intrigued. But his hangover after a night of drinking and talking with the men is a terrible one; he wakes up shackled in a dark cellar, and the two unfamiliar men who walk in refuse to believe his claims that he’s a free man, and they beat him bloody. Within days, a shell-shocked Solomon is at an auction, being bought as property by a wealthy Southern gentleman named Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). Solomon is agreeable enough to do some work around the house, and his quiet intelligence earns his master’s respect. But even that affable master won’t listen to his claims that he’s a free man, and drops him like a bad habit after he has a run-in with one of his work masters. Sold so Ford can avoid embarrassment or public scandal, Solomon (now re-named Platt) becomes the property of Edwin Epps (an electric Michael Fassbender), who, even among slavers, has a reputation as a hard man. A drinker who uses Bible scriptures about servants and masters as excuses to whip his slaves, and who wakes them up in the middle of the night to dance for his enjoyment, Epps is a pitiless man. Most unfortunately, Solomon catches Epps’ eye in the worst way—he grows close to Patsey (Kenyan-born newcomer Lupita Nyong’o), a gorgeous, well-mannered slave Epps routinely lusts for. Dealing with more beating and abuse than ever, Solomon begins to despair, fearing a chance to return to his family may never come.
What Doesn’t Work?
12 Years begins slowly, starting with a random clip about two-thirds of the way through Solomon’s time as a slave before diverting back to the beginning. Early on, Ejiofor’s performance is surprisingly reserved—Solomon doesn’t try to move heaven and earth to try to get back his freedom; he seemed far too submissive. About the entire first half of the film seemed to lack a sharper, fiercer emotion, despite all the drama going on. And yes, that slower pace and more muted reactions made me start to wonder if the movie and its actors were overrated.
What Works?
Yes, 12 Years turned out to be one of those movies that’s just decent enough to hold your attention for an hour and a half, and then grabs you by the throat in a moment of high emotion, and soars from there. At least, that was my experience—what with the beatings and the whipping and other dramatic circumstances, I wouldn’t be surprised if other viewers were stimulated far earlier than me. But looking back, I’m again obliged to think the British-born McQueen’s approach was superb—to avoid over-stimulating the viewer, to avoid scaring them with Passion of the Christ-style horrors being enacted every minute, but to immerse them in that world. That’s the genius of his directing, and of Ejiofor’s quiet, largely reserved performance. It’s a sad fact of American history after all—for centuries, blacks were slaves, viewed as property and less-than-human, and whites were allowed to treat them absolutely however they wanted. That’s how the movie depicts it. As sympathetic twenty-first century moviegoers, we’re undoubtedly inclined to think of the whites as evil and the blacks as good, but the movie, largely, refuses to take sides. It’s that quiet, unbiased power that’s so impressive.
I knew Ejiofor to be one of the favorites for the Best Actor Oscar going in, and I support that notion going out. It’s true his performance isn’t a super-charismatic one—Solomon is a regular man thrust into what were, then, regular circumstances; he’s not a freedom fighter, the leader of a revolution, or an abolitionist. Together with McQueen’s level, unflinching camera, Ejiofor brings us the horror of Solomon’s ordeal early on, yelling and moaning and panting with pain during his first beating, which is shown in its entirety (the devices used being a heavy wooden paddle and a cat-o-nine-tails). But that’s largely as loud and showy as Ejiofor’s portrayal gets. That said, the actor’s big, dark eyes are veritable wells of emotion, and he’s able to wordlessly show Solomon’s shock, his pain, his longsuffering, his fear, and his desperation. His late meeting with the man who becomes his savior (a Canadian carpenter played by an nicely-understated Brad Pitt) is rife with hope suppressed by reality, pain, and hard-taught pessimism. And the moment where he’s able to claim his identity as a free man is thrilling in its release, for Solomon and for the audience.
The entire cast is very good. The big stars like Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch are solid in smaller roles, but each actor has their part to play. Paul Giamatti helps the movie move into its second act with a part as a clipped, objective slave-trader who fondles and slaps slaves and thinks nothing of separating a mother from her children. A typically-oily Paul Dano is perfectly hateful as a work captain nemesis of Solomon’s (Dano’s biggest contribution to the film might be a long, crude song he sings in his first appearance; the song, rife with racial slurs, is played for four solid minutes and, to my intense chagrin and embarrassment, got stuck in my head). Another Oscar favorite, Lupita Nyong’o, tugs relentlessly at the heartstrings as Patsey, who’s so full of life and love but doesn’t have Solomon’s chance of freedom. And Sarah Paulson is sickeningly-poisonous as Edwin Epps’ demeaning, jealous wife.
Epps himself is played by the new-age Magneto, Michael Fassbender, who starred in McQueen’s first two movies (2008’s Hunger and 2011’s Shame) and who is, clearly, about as fearless as actors come. The role of Epps, though showy, is an unenviable one, a portrait of a man who’s cruelly-calloused and utterly-pathetic at the same time. One minute he’s staggering around, drunk, being coldly insulted by his wife, who threatens to leave him; the next he’s telling that wife she can leave if she wants—she doesn’t satisfy him anyway—and he's ordering his slaves to be beaten senseless. Together with Nyong’o, Fassbender stars in one of the most intimate rape scenes ever; it’s not a graphic scene at all, but the two actors’ faces, captured in close-up, will stick in your mind.
Content
Well, other than the whole vaguely-racist thing…12 Years A Slave is a tough movie, from countless utterances of the “n” word to the lingering shot of a woman’s back bursting under repeated whip lashes. All the nudity in the film is unglamorous and used in a non-sexual context (slaves are put on display at the auction in which Solomon is sold), but it’s full frontal, for male and female. Again, what’s most shocking about 12 Years is the un-shocking way it portrays all these hard-to-comprehend ways in which people once talked to and treated others on a regular basis. McQueen’s camera doesn’t shy away. If your eyes might, you may want to reconsider watching this one.
Bottom Line
It builds slowly, but 12 Years A Slave is a movie of immense power, full of gripping performances and lingering images that will stay with you. It’ll probably be a Best Picture Oscar contender, and it should.
12 Years A Slave (2013)
Directed by Steve McQueen
Screenplay by John Ridley; based on the memoir '12 Years A Slave' by Solomon Northup
Rated R
Length: 134 minutes
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