12 Years A Slave is the
third feature film from artist turned director Steve McQueen, who is developing
into a surprisingly mainstream filmmaker, following the somewhat esoteric Hunger
and the challenging yet disappointingly conventional Shame. 12
Years A Slave is initially off-putting, being too much of an Oscar-friendly
drama to fit easily alongside McQueen’s other work. In fact, it is when one
forgets McQueen’s involvement that the film begins to work in its own right, an
odd example of an auteur’s disappearance.
Based on a true story, the film
follows Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man in 1841 New York, who is
kidnapped and sold into slavery. Over the next twelve years, he is passed
between a variety of masters, learning along the way to keep his head down and
tell no one about his previous situation. Northup thus leads a dangerous and
precarious existence at the hands of white masters in the Deep South.
Steve McQueen’s films have always
stridden a thin line between the art house and the multiplex. Hunger and
Shame were both bleak and muted in a rather minimalist way and yet both
remain fairly conventional in terms of story arcs. Shame fit neatly into
a three-act structure and even offered rather simplistic explanations for its
protagonist’s urges. It is difficult to see 12 Years A Slave as anything
other than a Hollywood drama – something that is not helped by one traditional
crane shot’s dodgy CGI landscape or by a few rather manipulative scenes.
McQueen’s trademark long takes are still present, though they are much shorter
and more embedded within the film’s storyline. Aside from some extreme
violence, which is justified for the purposes of realism but which nonetheless
represent a breaking from the tradition of the Hollywood drama, 12 Years A
Slave is almost entirely conventional. The star cameos (Paul Giamatti, Paul
Dano, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt) are often
off-putting, their sudden appearance taking you out of the film just when you
were beginning not to notice the mechanics of the screenplay and
direction.
That said, the film's moral complexity confronts the audience, forcing them to question their own feelings about the action onscreen, suggesting that American slavery was not a battle between innocent slaves and the evil white slave owners. Benedict Cumberbatch's Ford is a less obviously loathsome character than Fassbender's Epps - but then he is all the worse for his moralising does not extend as far as the question of slavery. As compassionate as he is, he is happy to turn a blind eye to what cruelty and suffering when he needs to. Steve McQueen is too good a filmmaker to let Ford off the hook, but neither does he openly berate him, instead showing the more corrosive side to the evil of slavery. Meanwhile, other slaves hold the whips and openly collude with their evil bosses. As well as this, the film offers a much more violent and bleak representation of American slavery yet seen, McQueen refusing to look away in order to represent what slavery is like without any respite for the audience. As a result, the film can be depressing and suffocating but then what true representation of slavery wouldn't be?
That said, the film's moral complexity confronts the audience, forcing them to question their own feelings about the action onscreen, suggesting that American slavery was not a battle between innocent slaves and the evil white slave owners. Benedict Cumberbatch's Ford is a less obviously loathsome character than Fassbender's Epps - but then he is all the worse for his moralising does not extend as far as the question of slavery. As compassionate as he is, he is happy to turn a blind eye to what cruelty and suffering when he needs to. Steve McQueen is too good a filmmaker to let Ford off the hook, but neither does he openly berate him, instead showing the more corrosive side to the evil of slavery. Meanwhile, other slaves hold the whips and openly collude with their evil bosses. As well as this, the film offers a much more violent and bleak representation of American slavery yet seen, McQueen refusing to look away in order to represent what slavery is like without any respite for the audience. As a result, the film can be depressing and suffocating but then what true representation of slavery wouldn't be?
The film’s primary focus is on
how Solomon Northup survives his ordeal and the alterations in his personality
that are required to do this. Initially, Northup is outraged and indignant.
Soon realizing that his past could be dangerous to him, he must act like a
normal slave and not allow his masters to see him as anything different. He is
thrown into a series of morally compromising situations and is constantly in
danger of losing any sense of who he was. The film also focuses on his despair
and his decision not to give up in the face of his apparently hopeless future.
The film requires a strong performance to bring across this character’s duality
and it has one in Ejiofor’s work, which avoids big Oscar-friendly histrionics
(where other actors in the film itself may not) in favour of a quiet pain and
anguish that is all the more believable. These themes coupled with a great
central performance ensures that 12 Years A Slave succeeds both as a
drama designed for mass entertainment and as something more interesting.
It is interesting to note that,
in Django Unchained, Tarantino tries to develop a similar idea of the
adapting that Django must overcome in order to survive – though he fails since
he is much more interested in film references, long bouts of monologue and
exploding bodies. Conversely, it is difficult to watch 12 Years A Slave and
not wish for the kind of bloody satisfaction so gleefully though tediously
doled out by Tarantino, although McQueen makes short shrift of the idea of
violent revolution all too quickly and, it has to be said, convincingly. It is
difficult to watch 12 Years A Slave so soon after Django Unchained –
especially since one early scene in the former looks identical in terms of
lighting and framing to the latter. 12 Years A Slave works in some ways
as a riposte of Django Unchained, particularly in its much more honest
focus on the victims of slavery, in their much more three-dimensional
characterization and in the fact that Solomon Northup survives thanks to his
own skills and not through the advice and assistance of a nice white man.
As a drama, 12 Years A Slave is most effective
in its quiet moments, McQueen showing a flair for the more subtle drama of
single scenes as well as in the more uncompromising scenes of institutional
racism and brutality. As a whole, 12 Years A Slave moves through a variety of
registers usually under the influence of its performers. Fassbender, Dano and
Sarah Paulson overplay their scenes and the film seems over the top when they
are centre stage, while it plays best when Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o and Adepero
Oduye are given the space to act. Since it is tied so closely to its
performances, 12 Years A Slave ultimately succeeds or fails on the
quality of the work of its actors in individual scenes, making it a flawed and overblown yet effective and moving drama.
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