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I remember after Shame had come out, and emotionally gut-punched me, reading about Steve McQueen’s new film being an adaptation of Solomon Northup’s memoir, Twelve Years a Slave. Shame had impressed me greatly, and I figured if anyone could make an emotional honesty and devastating portrait of the American slavery system, it would be McQueen. He seems to traffic in complicated and harrowing dramas about men stuck in tumultuous situations and fighting for their way out.
12 Years a Slave did not disappoint me. I think that when all of the dust settles and long after the awards season has ended, 12 Years a Slave (and Gravity) will stand as a towering achievement in movie-making for the year 2013.
Granted, this isn’t exactly a comfortable viewing experience, but 12 Years feels incredibly authentic, radiates brilliance in every facet and is feels like an essential film blooming before our eyes. You can pick just about any segment of the film and talk about how perfect it works in unison with everything else. But since I’ve already mentioned McQueen, we might as well start with the director.
Only his third feature film, 12 Years continues on with his distinctive style of film-making – an artfully composed, starkly emotional and viscerally engaging. His clear-eyed vision leads the charge that the rest of the cast and crew follow along with. Never one to hand-hold or play things for Oscar prestige, McQueen instead delivers a complicated and daring portrait of an evil that crept into every corner of American society, leaving long-lasting ramifications that haven’t healed entirely over time.
Then of course there’s the script by John Ridley. Yes, the film mostly focuses in on the narrative of Northup’s enslavement and eventually freedom, but it also loads itself up with beautiful amounts of symbols and rich character details. Where to begin to discuss the scenes that disturbed or enlightened me and have stuck with me all of this time? The slave auction that sees a woman’s children torn from her side and sold off is a marvel of great acting, writing and directing. Another is a scene in which a field slave begs Northup to kill her and remove her from her miserable existence. Or the one where Northup is left strung up from a tree until his master arrives to cut him down while the other slaves go about their business and pretend to not witness or get involved with the atrocity happening before their eyes.
But we never lose sight of the hope and promise that gets Northup through every trial and harsh encounter. Northup’s memories and feelings about home, his longing to return to the safety and embrace of his family is the constant humming noise in the distance. And Chiwetel Ejiofor, a gifted and underrated British actor who has been turning good work for so long that it seems criminal that he’s just now getting a huge part like this, nails every nuance and conflicted emotion that the role requires. His pained face and tenacious inner strength are the visuals which Ridley’s script and McQueen’s direction lovingly drape themselves around. McQueen compared Ejiofor to Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte in terms of his class and dignity as an actor, strong comparisons but Ejiofor meets them with wild success.
The other two main roles go to Michael Fassbender as a sadistic slave owner and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o as a field slave. Fassbender, another great actor who seems to have only recently poked through the mainstream, transforms into a scary monster, a man who has turned scripture into an ordained right to punish his slaves and mistreat his wife as he sees fit. His character feels like a Molotov cocktail ready to light and ignite at a moment’s notice. While Nyong’o plays Patsey, one of Fassbender’s slaves and the object of his cruel affections. The rape she endures is painful, you can practically see her spirit hover above her body while it happens, and even worse is the whipping which sees small pieces of her back fly off as it builds in intensity and cruelty. But two scenes stuck with me longer, the above mentioned scene in which she smiling and calmly requests that Northup kill her and free her from her misery. The second features Alfre Woodard as a kept woman whom Patsey eagerly tries to learn from and mimic her decorum, class and nobility. It’s a strange scene in which Woodard reminds us her particular magic and gifts – someone give this woman a juicy movie role or great television series already! But Nyong’o is no slouch, and if there’s any justice on March 2nd she’ll walk to the podium to collect her Best Supporting Actress award for her committed turn. The emotional truth she brings to numerous scenes is the true staying power of her part, and not the physical tortures that she endures.
But there’s a tremendous amount of unique and underrated character actors surrounding those three, I’ve already mentioned Woodard, but there’s also Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Taran Killam and Adepero Oduye. Each and every single one of them is always a welcome presence to me as they bring with them a tremendous body of excellent work. Paulson is especially memorable as Fassbender’s jealous and cruel wife taking her frustrations out on Patsey every chance she gets. Giamatti as the slave auctioneer sticks with her for the amount of uncaring and unflinching efficiency with which he completes his work. The sight of Oduye crying and in hysterics over her children being ripped from her offers him only a minor annoyance and nothing more. Oduye’s grieving mother is a small wonder, but another reminder that there’s a lot of talented black actresses out there with little to no substantive work outside of opportunities like this. While McNairy and Killam are the foppish yet sinister men who trick Northup into getting drunk and sell him off. Cumberbatch is Northup’s first owner, a decent man and a preacher, which almost makes him crueler in the long run. While Dano, who seems to excel at playing sociopaths and troubled young men, is the carpenter in charge of work going on at Cumberbatch’s property and constantly butts heads with Northup before eventually trying to lynch him. And lastly Pitt, who comes in at the end, a benevolent Canadian who agrees to try to help free Northup from his enslavement, and I know it seems strange to call a major star like Pitt an underrated actor but think of much solid work he has done in the past and yet we continue to think of him as an attractive movie star only. It’s a symphony of great actors relishing the juicy parts they’ve been given.
I could clearly keep rhapsodizing about the merits and beauty to be found in 12 Years a Slave, but I fear that I would bore you if I kept prattling on and on and on. So I will wrap up with this, here is a film that has the courage to stare the subject of slavery in the face and never waiver in its gaze for a single moment.
