Ryan McNeil
There are many words that have already been lobbed around about Steve McQueen’s 12 YEARS A SLAVE.
Raw, unflinching, brutal, unrelenting, harrowing, shattering, blistering, savage, and gruesome to name a few. However, I believe those sorts of adjectives do the film a disservice. They make it sound unpalatable; like the sort of thing one believes they should see even if they don’t necessarily want to see it. That’s why I believe it’s important to underline that while this film is every one of those things (and more) it is also tremendously moving, surprisingly intricate, and – strange as this is to say – spectacularly beautiful.
12 YEARS A SLAVE is the story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A free black man living in New York State, he is lured to the American Beltway with a job offering. Once there, he is drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery. Trying to explain that he is a free man does him no good, and thoughts of fighting back do even less.
As a desperate act of self-preservation, he goes along with his capture, hoping that at some stage, the key to his freedom might eventually present itself.
He is first sold to William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), a Louisiana plantation owner. While working Ford’s fields, Northup is a fast study who even sees ways to increase production. One would think this would help his cause, but one would be wrong. All it does is fly in the face of Tibbets (Paul Dano); the slave foreman who believes that his way is the only way. When an altercation between Tibbets and Northup finally arises, Ford sells Northup to another plantation for Northup’s own protection.
This is where things go from bad to worse.
Northup is sold to cotton plantation owner, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender). Epps quotes scripture that says that a servant defiant of his master shall be beaten (Luke 12:47 fyi). He fancies himself a breaker of wills, and a man solely out for himself. This selfishness is underlined in many ways. Not only is he wary of his new purchase, but he is deeply enraptured by his prized worker Patsey (newcomer Lupita Nyong’o). Not only do Patsey’s nimble fingers allow her to bring in double the yield of her average male counterpart, but her beauty isn’t lost on Epps. To Epps, she is a prize – one that makes him money, and one he’ll happily fuck. She’s not a person though – not a woman he could love, nor one he could marry.
That role belongs to Mary Epps (Sarah Paulson). She must stand idly by and watch as her husband lusts after someone she believes is beneath her. However, like many others on the Epps Plantation, to raise quarrel with Edwin would cost dearly. So she doesn’t. Instead, she keeps a close eye on Northup, seeing him as more than he seems but still not as an equal.
It’s here at The Epps Plantation that Northup stays for a long time…slowly getting the life ground out of him, but never enough that he stops thinking about getting out and getting home.
We need 12 YEARS A SLAVE right now.
At this precise moment in time, we have found ourselves in a dangerous place…a place where we forget. History is beginning to get glossed over, or just accepted as common knowledge. The problem with that is the knowledge isn’t “common”. Besides the fact that the details and atrocities captured in 12 YEARS A SLAVE are beginning to fall out of the collective consciousness, they are the very opposite of common. What happened in North America was a grand failing of morals, a lack of humanity at the highest order. It wasn’t just permitted, it was accepted. We on this continent want to believe we have evolved, and that this is strictly our past. Yet the same year that we celebrate an anniversary of The March on Washington, we weep at an American Justice System that allows a young black man to be killed for his unfortunate choice of clothing.
I put it to you that we are forgetting, and because of that, we need to be reminded. But how? Well, if you’re Steve McQueen, you remind your audience with raw emotion, with visceral brutality, and with stunning elegance.
It should come as no surprise that Steve McQueen is a visual artist by trade, because so many of the images we see in 12 YEARS A SLAVE feel as though they were oil paintings come to life. Whether we are looking at huddled captives lit by moonlight in the galley of a ship, or the churning wake in The Mississippi River, McQueen treats his camera like a paintbrush. With that brush, he turns out canvas after canvas that move us on a purely visual level. Sometimes they move us with pure beauty, sometimes with abject horror. Amazingly, more than once, he achieves both at once.
McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley also know well enough not to stand up and say “Slavery was bad” for two hours. Instead, they create a complicated story where a man is first given a new identity, and then must shed much of his old one to survive. They tell a tale of a system so rife, that even an act of mercy can lead to great inhumanity. Perhaps most interestingly, they tell a tale where three women find themselves on the same plantation, and all three have incredibly complex roles. None are granted full purview, none are treated as equals. All hold sway over the man who owns the plantation, all understand how to work the system to their advantage. Together they will illustrate the great contradiction that serves as the staging ground for this film’s second act…and really, the great contradiction that was North American slavery.
In perhaps its most unforgettable moment, 12 YEARS A SLAVE takes dead aim at those of us that decide to mind our business. Around halfway through the film, something terrible takes place…something you would think would stop all around it in their tracks. However, that’s just not the case. Chores are carried out, conversations are had, games are even played. All of it happens in full view of a disturbing action. Yet, to stray from routine would be putting oneself at risk, so most do not. This moment makes us feel awful, and it is supposed to. It is a stunning and horrifying reminder that to mind our own business is to placate injustice. To mind our own business is downright vicious.
Keeping to ourselves leads us to forget; and we have already forgotten far too much.
Superb stuff mate. This has been the most anticipated film of the year for me, so it’s been quite a long wait! Immensely excited for it.
Not to stoke the hype any higher than I already have, but the wait will be worth it.
Great review! I can’t wait until one of my theaters gets this. I’m actually getting kind of annoyed that they have multiple copies of other films and not this one.
Am I right in guessing that you live in/near MSP? If I heard the guys on The Row Three Cinecast correctly, you should be getting this soon.
Thanks for reading – I’m always leery of publishing reviews on opening day since most visitors of this site tend to only drop by once they’ve watched the film.
I live about 3 hours away from Minneapolis. I do love watching movies there, but it’s hard to get the time to do it now. I like reading reviews on opening day, especially for indies tat I probably won’t get to see right away.
No argument here – three hours is a long ways to drive for a film! It’ll arrive in a few weeks I’m sure. I actually didn’t realize until I wrote this morning’s post that it actually only opened on 19 screens across North America this weekend.
Just saw this yesterday and I’m still shaken by it. I actually teared up this morning in the shower as I thought about some scenes depicted in this film with unflinching honesty. That scene you spoke of towards the end of your post is extremely disturbing and heartbreaking in particular… “To mind our own business is downright vicious.” You got that right. I think that’s the scene that affected me the most, it’s just… unbearable. Yet, we’ve surely guilty of it at some point in varying degrees.
Agree with the full rating btw! Great review, Ryan.
Funny thing:
Sometimes I don’t bother writing a full review for films I see at TIFF, just because in the weeks and months that pass, they fade in my memory too much. This wasn’t one of those cases. So much of this film has stuck with me in the six weeks that have passed since I watched it.
It’s brutal – but beautifully brutal in a way I hope to revisit sometime soon.
good review. great comment that he had to shed some of his identity in order to simply “survive.”
It’s crazy right? You’d think that the one advantage he’d have is that he was further educated than most of his fellow slaves…and yet if he’d let that be known, it would have meant his life.
Such a complex story.
Completely agree. McQueen and Lee Daniels (with the Butler) each attempted to pick up crucial pieces of African American history this year and remind us why we need to remember these incidents, but where Daniels fell to preaching, fumbling, and piecing together history in an unsatisfying way, McQueen makes real art. I thought this film was an absolute triumph. This is a project that feels immediate, personal, and not like some distant, glossed over bit of historical fiction. Hopefully audiences aren’t put off by the adjectives being thrown around, here. There are scenes that are tough to watch, but they’re framed seamlessly and beautifully within the film.
I still haven’t seen THE BUTLER, so I can’t comment on what it does or doesn’t do. One thing I can see though, is that it doesn’t go back far enough.
If I understand it right, the story jumps off from The Civil Rights Era, and to my mind, that’s a story that’s been well covered in American Film. McQueen actually scores bonus points by going back further, and touching a spot in history that too many filmmakers have been too afraid – or too unsupported – to visit.
Great review. Man, that scene you refer to in the end brilliantly captured the whole damn movie. I doubt I’ll ever erase it from memory. I’m so glad that we have Steve McQueen making movies.
I thought I referred to a scene in the middle? I can think of two scenes towards the end that rocked me as well.
One is the static shot of Northup. He appears to just be looking off into the distance, but we slowly see his emotions beginning to get the better of him. The other is the final scene in the film, one dotted by the words “I’m sorry”. I was wrecked.
Yeh, we’re referring to the same scene. I meant “the end” in terms of the end of your review. I should have worded it better.
This is a brilliant review. I don’t think this movie comes out here until December, but it is my most anticipated film. Both Hunger and Shame were five star films for me, so I’m definitely expecting big things of this, and it seems like he’ll deliver!
Get ready for something a little different. Both HUNGER and SHAME (while amazing) felt more cold and arty than what you’ll get here. This film is a little more warm and lush.
It seems strange to say this, but it feels like McQueen getting in touch with his inner Malick.
12 Years A Slave left me…speechless. Honestly, it’s such a cliched thing to say – but it was a film that I needed to just process… I haven’t been so emotionally affected by a film in such a long long time.
It’s stayed with me since the TIFF premiere – and I’ve been a really big word of mouth promoter of just how incredible and important this film is. You’ve captured it beautifully in your review.
I’ve heard rumors in the twittersphere that some Academy voters actually WON’T see this film – because of the brutality depicted, the shame, and the blissful ignorance of this dark time in American history. It’s so unfair.
12 Years A Slave is the most deserving of the win for Best Picture.
http://ramblingrooby.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/movie-review-12-years-a-slave/
Thanks for reading Ruby! What’s stuck with me through the months since TIFF, is the way this film does two things at once. On the one hand, it takes something absolutely terrible and captures it with such a high degree of beauty. It’s as though McQueen knew how tough this film would be to get through for audiences and said to himself “I need to lull them with craft – I need to seduce them into sticking with it”. So on every technical level, the film is so deeply Terrance Malick-esque (that’s a compliment!).
The other thing it does is that it dares you to look away. It sugar-coats nothing, pussy-foots nothing, pulls no punches. It looks us square in the eye and virtually says “I know you’re uncomfortable, how do you think we felt?” and I can’t think of another film I’ve seen do that.
I heard the rumours about voters sitting it out too – I truly hope they aren’t that dumb. They’d have no idea the beauty they are missing.
Great review Ryan. I actually had the recent urge to brave this film again, and this review definitely gave me the push to do so. I agree, 12 Years a Slave is a film we need right now. And probably will for a long, long time.
For a moment, I was thinking this comment alert was spam…since so few readers ever dig back to see what I wrote about an older release. So first and foremost, thanks for digging back.
Secondly, thanks for getting me to re-read my own work. I had to shake my head at the fact that it was one year ago that I was saying “North America needs to be reminded about its racist history”.
If I’d known only that the year to come would make that reminder even more urgent…