Lucas Versantvoort / January 17, 2015
How does one review a film like this when there’s so much disgusting
history involved? A review is usually about the ways in which a film succeeds
and fails at what it tries to accomplish. Yet to merely sum up and review the
film’s accomplishments… A part of me feels like if I were to criticize a part
of 12 Years a Slave, I’d not be
taking the subject seriously enough, you know what I mean? All this rambling
aside, director Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave seeks to portray slavery
purely, unadulterated and as uncensored as possible. And in that, it succeeds
like nothing else out there.
The story starts with a
series of crosscuts between Northup’s time as a slave and his earlier days
where he was just a regular citizen with a wife and two children. A free man,
he’s suddenly invited by two travelling artists who seek his skills with the
violin to join their traveling circus act of sorts. They promise him a lot of
money. They drug him, however, and have him imprisoned and enslaved. Solomon
protests as anyone would, by claiming he’s a free man, but since he’s been
robbed of his papers, his protests fall on deaf ears and he gets nothing but a
merciless whipping as a result. It only gets worse from here as he’s sent from
landowner to landowner, all of them different, and endures an inhuman amount of
suffering. One of the evilest landowners he encounters is Epps (Michael
Fassbender), who absolves himself of all his sins with that ever-useful object,
the Bible. Not only does Epps believe God and the law are on his side, he has
taken a dangerous liking to one of the female slaves, Patsy (Lupita Nyong’o). As
they endure and endure, Solomon seeks a way to regain his freedom and return to
his family.
It would have been easy, not to
mention justifiable, to portray all white men as demonic. However, McQueen and
writer John Ridley still manage to present quite a nuanced series of white men.
While Epps is undoubtedly the cruelest of them all, he’s quite nuanced in his
depravity. It is both interesting—and frightening—how he uses God and notions
of property to justify his cruelty. Also, in his lusting after Patsy, he
reminds me of Goeth from Schindler’s List, with both of them lusting after and simultaneously
despising a woman around them. He is opposed in this by his wife who can’t
stand his desire for a black woman and uses that to lash out against Patsy. I particularly
appreciate the restraint shown by the filmmakers when Epps decides to whip
Patsy for disobeying him in some way and you can see the doubt in his eyes when
he has the whip in his hands. In these precious few seconds, it appears he
might give in to his emotions and embrace his feelings of guilt, but of course
it’s not to be.
Then there are other
white men like Freeman (an ironic name if there ever was one) who sees slavery
purely as a form of business. And what of Armsby, a white man who’s freely entered
slavery, or ‘indentured servitude’, as a way to earn some money as he foolishly
spent it all on whiskey and such?
Even more nuanced is the film’s
portrayal of the agency of slaves, particularly those of black women. This is
seen when Solomon is sent by Epps to another villa to fetch Patsy. There, he’s
greeted by Patsy and a black slave whom the owner has wedded. This has
obviously elevated her status and denied her the fate of being constantly
whipped. From her words it becomes obvious she has accepted the owner’s sexual
advances, because she knew it would save from finding herself on the receiving
end of the whip. You’d expect nothing but suffering in a film like this and
then to see a black woman turn the situation around for her own benefit was
amazing.
In a sense, portraying the entire
history of slavery would be too much for any film. Usually, biopics are judged
by the way they adhere to history which results in sometimes teeny tiny tedious
details being criticized for the way they misrepresent some part of history.
McQueen, being a director with an incredible sense for visuals, seeks not to
statically explain the history of slavery, but to put you in the middle of it,
as if you were walking amongst those that suffered. And in this, he succeeds
tremendously, but not just in a visual sense. Take one of the landowners, Ford.
Played by heartthrob Benedict Cumberbatch, he appears to be a kind landowner. When
he buys Solomon, he also tries to buy Eliza and her children. The seller swiftly
sells one of them to another and won’t drop his price for the other no matter
how much Ford appeals to his (nonexistent) conscience. Seeing no way out, Ford
buys Solomon and Eliza and is forced to leave the children. This is the first
scene that shows him to be a compromising idealist. Nevertheless, he appears to
harbor no ill will toward the slaves he buys. When Solomon outwits Tibeats, one
of the rednecks working under Ford, he praises him by gifting him a violin. All
seems well, until Eliza tells Solomon that despite what he says, Ford will make
no active attempt to free him. When the situation with Tibeats gets out of
hand, Ford tells Solomon he’s been forced to sell him to another landowner,
Epps, otherwise Tibeats would surely kill him. Ford adds that Epps is
exceptionally cruel, but that frankly no one else would have Solomon. Solomon
pleads with him to listen to his story of how he was a free man, but Ford
cannot bear to hear it, saying he has a debt to mindful of and that he’s trying
to save Solomon’s life. In Ford we see the kind of ambiguous idealism that must
have characterized a number of landowners. He sort of sees blacks as equals,
but is not in the political or social position to advocate such a view when so
many whites aggressively disagree and when he would be breaking the law. In a
way, Ford is just another slave-owner and we must abandon the illusion that any
blacks under him are truly free. Sure, they are freer than if they were working
under Epps, but that’s relative; they’re not truly free. What is ingenious
about these scenes is that you quickly take a liking to Ford, because he seems
gentle. Things seem to go well when Solomon is rewarded with a violin for
outwitting one of Ford’s workers. What happens here is that, because we
experience everything through Solomon’s eyes, we want the best for him and,
given the overall ghastly circumstances, working under Ford seems as good as it
gets. You’re thus lulled into the idea that this situation is ideal and you
briefly forget the notion of true freedom. Somehow McQueen makes you briefly see
things through the eyes of a black slave for whom freedom is a long lost ideal
forgotten in favor of living under someone without fear of being whipped. This
is what truly makes this film remarkable, McQueen’s ability to put you in
Solomon’s shoes.
It’s nigh impossible to review 12 Years without mentioning the acting,
but how do you describe this kind of visceral acting? All I can say is that it’s
mesmerizing all across the board: Ejiofor is fantastic in that he tries to
endure everything, but he also portrays Solomon’s slowly increasing desperation;
Fassbender makes the most of the demonic, yet nuanced, Epps and between you and
me, it’s high time he was rewarded for his collaborations with McQueen; last,
but definitely not least, it’s Nyong’o who—in her debut, mind you—hits you
right in the gut. You’d have to be one extremely hardened cynic to not be moved
by her performance.
One possible thing I could hold
against 12 Years is the presence of
just too many a familiar face. Now, I like Paul Dano, Brad Pitt and so on, but I
can only handle so many familiar faces before immersion is broken and I become
aware I’m watching a film. The presence of Brad Pitt as the gentle white guy is
easily the worst offender. I ‘m aware he wasn’t in it for self-indulgence, I’m
just saying it’s a bit of a shame, because this is exactly the kind of film
where the presence of many unfamiliar faces would improve the experience and sense
of realism.
But overall, this film is as
visceral an experience of slavery as it gets. McQueen has made the wise
decision to just show what happened without pulling any cinematic punches and
the end result is stunning and moving. I can’t wait to see what kind of
challenging subject McQueen will tackle next.
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