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| 12 Years A Slave has a number of squirm-inducing long takes. |
Just a year after Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (reviewed
here), director Steve McQueen has brought another slavery tale to
mainstream America, but his 12 Years A
Slave proves a far more unsettling experience.
Whereas Django
Unchained had all sorts of accouterments that made its brutality palpable
for viewers – clever dialogue, irreverent humor and, importantly, the revenge
element – 12 Years A Slave is an
unflinching horror story. It is a serious movie about a serious topic, and in depicting
slave conditions of the mid 1800s, it offers no moments of levity to break up
the ugliness.
Based on the autobiographical account of Solomon
Northup, 12 Years A Slave tells the
story of how a free, educated black man was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Northup
languished on several southern plantations for 12 years before finally coming
across a Canadian carpenter willing to send word to his family and friends up
north. After being freed, he became a major voice for the abolitionist cause and
joined the Underground Railroad before ultimately disappearing a decade later
under mysterious circumstances midway through the Civil War.
Knowing all of that doesn’t spoil the movie since it
basically gives away the resolution in the title. The film is much more
concerned with communicating the slavery experience – the savagery of a broken
and immoral system that shockingly and embarrassingly took root in our country.
McQueen doesn’t shy away from the inherent inhumanity of the story, and he
purposefully holds certain shots for unbearably long amounts of time.
Two whippings are depicted in one-shot long takes and
a scene in which Solomon is left hanging by a noose, struggling on tiptoes to
stay alive is made all-the-more uncomfortable by contrasting his squirming for
survival against the everyday farm work happening around him. Meanwhile, another
scene in which slaves are displayed naked for purposes of sale is particularly
unnerving given just how blasé the customers seem as they roam around an open
house perusing potential product.
The cast is uniformly excellent, as one might expect
given the three acting nominations the film landed from the Academy. Chiwetel
Ejiofor is a gifted actor who probably hasn’t gotten the opportunities he
deserves because he’s something like the eighth or ninth middle-aged
black guy vying for roles in Hollywood, but he owns the screen here, using his
wonderfully expressive face to communicate an array of emotions from confusion
to desperation to relief.
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| Prepare for some powerhouse acting. |
Meanwhile, McQueen regular Michael Fassbender gives
a terrifying portrayal as Edwin Epps, an unhinged slave owner who uses select
bible passages to justify his unbridled mistreatment of slaves. Both Ejiofor
and Fassbender are worthy of any recognition that comes their way and the two
of them share a quiet and intense sequence by lamp light that is one my
favorite individual scenes from a 2013 film.
Despite their greatness, most of the acting accolades
for the film have been funneled toward Lupita Nyong’o. She plays Patsey, a
slave with an unparalleled ability to pick cotton who becomes the unfortunate focus
of Epps’ affections, leading to a great deal of abuse from his jealous wife (Sarah
Paulson as an evil Lady MacBeth type). I wouldn’t normally have expected Nyong’o
to get such awards traction, but it’s a relatively weak field and she gives a solid
performance, so I have no qualms about her taking home as many trophies as possible.
The rest of the cast is populated by a number of
well-known actors, which can, at times, become a bit of a distraction. Paul
Dano and Benedict Cumberbatch are given enough to do that they blend in seamlessly,
but Alfre Woodard and Paul Giamatti call undue attention to themselves despite
delivering fine performances.
Worst of all is the casting of Brad Pitt as the
Canadian who orchestrated Solomon’s freedom. Pitt’s a producer on the film and
he deserves a lot of credit for its existence, but he’s too big a star to show
up in a spot like this. The role is a bit problematic anyway since the character
is sort of a deus ex machina, but considering Pitt’s producer status, his
presence adds a seemingly self-aggrandizing element. There’s nothing wrong with his performance, but it does pull the
viewer out of the narrative once Brad Pitt shows up to punch slavery in the
mouth.
That’s a minor
blight, but the film does have some other flaws. For instance, the passage of time is poorly delineated
and the key relationship between Patsey and Solomon is underdeveloped. However, none of that takes away from the achievement that is 12 Years A Slave. This is a great piece of film-making filled with
a number of harrowing sequences and exceptional work in front of and behind the
camera. It's not the best film of 2013, but it's pretty damn close to the top of the list. A
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