As one might expect from a film that tells the story of a
free black man, Solomon Northup, living in Saratoga Springs, New York in the
1840s who is brought to Washington D.C. under false pretenses, drugged and sold
into slavery, Steve McQueen’s (Hunger,
Shame) latest film, 12 Years a Slave, is deeply troubling on
a number of levels. It is a film that unnerved me and deeply affected me
emotionally as I watched it. It’s also a film that, upon further reflection,
has some serious problems that need to be wrestled with. The more I think about
it, the less sure I am of what this film is. As such, I fear this “review”
might be less of a review and more of me just trying to work this thing out.
Above all, like McQueen’s two previous films, 12 Years a Slave is incredibly hard to
watch. But, no matter what the film is “about,” that’s the point. Steve McQueen
traffics in discomfort. As a visual artist and now as a director, he has shown
himself to be completely infatuated with the degradation of the human body and
soul. Just like the squalid conditions of the North Ireland prisons in Hunger and the graphic sexual depravity
in Shame, the sheer, utterly
despicable brutality of slavery in the antebellum south is the perfect lens
through which to view this common theme. And through that lens, the gaze of
McQueen’s (and his DP, Sean Bobbitt’s) camera is unflinching.
Sequences of intense suffering and humiliation are played in
long continuous shots, refusing the audience any sort of reprieve that a cut
here or there would afford. In one particular scene, Solomon, now with the
identity of “Platt” forced upon him, is hanged by the neck from a tree with
only his tip-toes preventing an excruciating death. As he sways back and forth,
gurgling and choking, the other slaves go about their chores, drying clothes or
tending the grass as if nothing were amiss. (This occurs over the course of
minutes in the film’s runtime, hours in the world of the film.) It is only when
another slave offers Solomon a relieving drink of water that McQueen offers the
audience a likewise respite. In another scene near the end of the film (also
easily the most viscerally brutal), a young, female slave is horrifically
whipped. The sequence again plays in one long, constantly-moving shot that is
sickeningly fluid, circling around and around capturing the unrelenting anguish
and emotional suffering of the young slave, her master and Solomon who is
forced to participate in the gruesome event. This is where I begin to question
things.
Because, as effective as these scenes may be (and man, are
they effective), I’m left wondering why McQueen chose to 1.) Make this film and
2.) Shoot it in the way he did. At heart, Steve McQueen is a visual artist and
his films, 12 Years a Slave included,
reflect this. As such, the cold, detached nature with which he films his
subjects is ambiguous. Yes, it could most certainly be a commentary on the
detached nature with which our society today views slavery – treating it as
something completely removed from today’s “post-racial” culture. A big part of
me buys into that. But I still can’t help but thinking about how this decision
could easily be a reflection of McQueen’s own detachment from his subject
matter. There was a nagging feeling I felt all throughout 12 Years a Slave that I just couldn’t place. I think now that
perhaps what I was feeling was the discomfort brought on by the fact that
McQueen is using slavery simply as a
backdrop for his continued obsession with the destruction of a person’s
humanity.
But this is not necessarily a knock on the film. I have
obviously never met Mr. McQueen. (I might go as far as saying he’s probably
never been to Kentucky.) And although he isn’t American and hasn’t, I would
assume, had to live and struggle with this country’s tumultuous relationship
with slavery and race relations (at least in the context of the American
south), I do know that his parents hail for the Caribbean which was deeply
involved in the slave trade. So, who am I to say what Mr. McQueen’s motivations
were for making this film? Nobody, that’s right. However, I am simply speaking to what I see
in the context of the film.
What I see in the film, is a nonlinear narrative told in
beautifully rendered tableaus that depict inhuman cruelty after inhuman
cruelty, one more hideously disturbing than the last. The problem is, that’s
basically all there is. For nearly the entire two hour runtime, McQueen rushes
from one torturous scene to the next, focusing almost exclusively on how that
torture lays the recipient low. Whether it be Solomon being violently beaten
down when he first finds himself imprisoned or Solomon being viciously whipped
for only picking 180 pounds of cotton
instead of the requisite 200, or whether it be Patsey being nearly murdered for
borrowing some soap from a neighboring plantation to wash herself or brutally
raped for no other reason than, “She’s his property and that’s just what master
Epps was feeling this particular night.” Yes, slavery is present during all of
this. But, more often than not, it seems stuck in the background, playing
second fiddle to McQueen’s true interest. And most of the instances where
slavery is discussed directly, it comes off as ham-fisted.
While McQueen’s depicts the perpetrated violence in
meticulous and stunning compositions, anything nuanced he might have said about
slavery is replaced with trite dialogue. Instead of showing the audience, he
simply tells us about it. For the one scene during which Benedict Cumberbatch
and other random slavers are looking for potential new meat and we see how
these black men and women are stripped naked and forced to stand at attention
as people they don’t know gawk at their bare bodies, check their teeth and ask
about their strength and endurance, we have tons of scenes like the ones with
Alfre Woodard’s black slave owner explaining how she worked herself a way in
the world and married her former master, and Brad Pitt’s Canadian miracle abolitionist
swooping in when all hope seems lost to preach the ills of slavery and rescue
Solomon from the maw of the abyss. I am absolutely fascinated by the scene of
Paul Giamatti showing off his “merchandise” to prospective buyers. The way the
camera weaves throughout the house, capturing the immense mental and physical
distress on the faces of the new slaves without one of them (save one or two)
speaking up for themselves, is magnificent. But again, this scene is treated
with such care because its subject is the destruction of the bodies and souls
of the slaves in the house, not because of its relationship to the institution
of slavery.
But again, and I can’t stress this enough, this fact doesn’t
make 12 Years a Slave a bad film. In
fact, I think it’s quite a good film. The acting, for one, is almost
universally amazing. There are some weird choices in the film, like a bearded
Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope, Looper) showing up for 2 minutes and then
disappearing forever or the aforementioned Brad Pitt who looks and sounds so
weird and whose dialogue might not seem so hackneyed if McQueen and
screenwriter John Ridley had not instilled so much cynicism into the audience
up until that point. But for those two choices, we have the likes of Benedict
Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender who has a spectacular turn as Edwin Epps. We
often see Epps just sitting in a chair in a drunken stupor, staring off into
the middle distance. In the already mentioned scene where he forces Solomon to
whip Patsey, it is not because he gets some sick pleasure from watching one
slave beat another. (At least, not in this particular instance.) It’s because
he can’t do it himself. As he stares at Patsey’s naked back, you can see the
fear in Fassbender’s eyes as they begin to well up with tears. How Fassbender
somehow manages to imbue some, dare I say, humanity into an otherwise
completely reprehensible and horrifyingly disgusting creature is remarkable.
Lupita Nyong’o is also a standout. In what is amazingly her
debut role, as the young slave, Patsey, Nyong’o gives a confident and assured performance,
expertly commanding the screen with the gravitas of a much more seasoned
performer. As the object of her master Epp’s deplorable lust and subsequently
his unfettered rage, much is asked of Nyong’o and she delivers spectacularly. In
her small, meek frame, she is able to convey the overwhelming weariness of body
and spirit that is the product of hundreds of years of subjugation. And when
she explains to Solomon that for her the only way to escape the inescapable is
through ending her own life, it is a revelation that is as devastating as it is
believable.
And, of course, there is Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup.
As Northup, Chiwetel is in nearly every scene in the film and, likewise, is
asked to shoulder much of the film’s weight. And he succeeds tremendously. As a
quiet and reserved leading man, Ejiofor conveys most of the toll taken on
Northup by the appalling acts committed against him solely in subtle
expressions in his face and in his wide eyes that are both accusing and full of
sorrow. In one particular scene, Northup and his fellow slaves are conducting a
funeral for one of their brethren who died of heat exhaustion in the cotton
fields. Looking on the gravesite, the men and women begin to sing a spiritual
and the camera slowly pulls in onto Solomon’s face. As we watch, his face
slowly contorts as if he has finally given in and completely accepted the
identity of a slave. It’s an outstanding scene, and the way Ejiofor is able to
totally morph his face into a visage of complete agony is amazing. Likewise, in
another scene near the end of the film, we see yet another close-up of Ejiofor’s
face. It is another long continuous shot, and during it Solomon simply stares
off into the camera. But he’s not looking at the audience or anything really.
He’s looking at the unthinkable cruelties that have befallen him and thousands
of people like him. He’s staring directly into the void of hopelessness that is
what has become of his life – a never-ending torment with the hope of relief or
rescue all but destroyed. And though Ejoifor barely moves, all of this is fully
and heartbreakingly depicted in his weary eyes; eyes that have had all their
life and fire harshly snuffed out.
I’m not going to say that 12 Years a Slave is exploitative, because I believe that connotation
is far too negative (on top of simply being untrue). But I don’t necessarily
believe that it warrants the “definitive film about slavery” moniker that everyone
is placing upon it. 12 Years a Slave
is not a document of history. It’s a dramatic retelling in which Steve McQueen
has taken and embellished what bits he has deemed most suitable for his goal –
that goal being to artfully depict the complete desolation of this man’s,
Solomon Northup, body and soul. And he accomplishes this magnificently. Apart
from just the explicit brutality committed against Northup, the psychological
destruction of the film’s subject is particularly absorbing. The way Solomon
Northup begins, declaring “I do not want to survive. I want to live,” and how
he is subsequently forced to hide his intelligence and talents until he is physically
and mentally broken down into the rudimentary form of only doing whatever it
takes to survive is incredible. I just can’t help but wish this connected to
the institution of slavery is a more interesting, nuanced way instead of just
feeling like Steve McQueen saying “slavery is bad and now let me use it as a
tool to tell the story I really want to tell.”
And so, while 12 Years
a Slave might not be the revolutionary film about slavery that everyone is
calling it, it is a film that conveys the destruction of the human body and
soul in a way that is deeply unnerving and viscerally and emotionally
effecting. And while 12 Years a Slave
might not be as culturally important a film as some are declaring, it is still
an incredibly beautiful, impeccably composed and shot, remarkably well-acted
film that deserves much praise and accolades. Just maybe not the ones it’s
getting.
8 0ut
of 10 (7 out of 10 as a film about slavery, 9 out of 10 as a film about the
degradation of human body and soul)
