telegraph.co.uk |
Since
this is Solomon’s story, let’s start with him.
This is a different sort of antebellum Deep South film; rather than
being born into slavery, indoctrinated with its dehumanization since birth,
Solomon is a free-born black used to life in the North. For him, slavery is an unpleasant fact that
he tries to avoid thinking about.
However, when his old life is stolen, he receives an immersive crash
course in the ways of slaves. The well-spoken,
dignified Solomon learns harshly and quickly to cast his gaze downward, feign
illiteracy, and keep his master satisfied.
Survival becomes his only consideration.
Even while he clings to his wife and children’s names, he urges Eliza, a
fellow slave, not to weep over her separation from her own children. He walks silently past a pair of men about to
be lynched, though he himself knows the feel of a noose.
Solomon
isn’t the only one shaped by slavery. Ford,
Solomon’s first owner, intrigues me.
Ford is regarded widely as a “good master;” he listens to Solomon’s
advice about the plantation and, aware of Solomon’s musical talent, gives him a
fiddle as a gift. “Good” plantation
owners in Hollywood went out with Gone
with the Wind, but Ford is handled with a complexity I don’t often see in
film. Right from the start, however, the
cracks in his uprightness show (let’s put aside for a moment that, whatever
qualities he may seem to have, he’s still buying
people and is clearly no prize.) Ford,
moved by the pleas of a young mother not to be parted from her children, tries
negotiating for their purchase as well, but when the cost proves too
prohibitive, he gives a can’t-be-helped sigh and buys the mother anyway. Likewise, when Solomon’s life is threatened
by one of Ford’s overseers, Ford looks to save him, not by freeing him, but by
selling him to another plantation. No
matter how sincere Ford’s moments of “niceness” may be, they’re little more
than a balm to obscure the fundamental atrocity.
Which
brings us to Epps. Solomon’s “savior,”
by Ford’s reckoning, turns out an abusive madman notorious for breaking
slaves. His plantation is a place of
constant fear and danger, and his slaves live at the mercy of his vicious
caprice. Anyone who fails to meet their
quota is whipped savagely, and the body of the beautiful young Patsy is forfeit
where her master is concerned. This is a
more familiar type of slave owner, one we’ve all seen before. But again, the characterization goes somewhat
deeper. Epps’s most interesting trait is
his opportunistic piousness. Between
physically, mentally, and sexually abusing his property, he reads the Bible to
them on Sundays. Not one for the “love
your neighbor” or “blessed are the meek” passages, he instead deplorably twists
the text to affirm his actions, holding it up as proof that his slaves deserve
this treatment. It’s a stark, ugly
demonstration that the Bible should never be a vehicle for justifying hate, a
lesson that some people haven’t taken to heart even today.
These
are just a few of the heady topics brought up by 12 Years a Slave. I can’t
fully imagine being born in that time and place, as a slave or a slaver. To be raised on the unimpeachable notion that
some people are livestock, with whom others may do whatever they please? I don’t see how anyone could be taught such
things and not be warped by them, and I think the film conveys that
spectacularly.
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