12 Years a Slave (2013, R)

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One of the heavy hitters at this year’s Oscars, 12 Years a Slave adapts the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1840.  The film is unflinching in its portrayal of Solomon’s experiences, crafting a story that captures the complex psychology of slavery on all sides.

 

Prior to his kidnap and the horrors that follow, Solomon is a well-to-do husband and father in Saratoga, New York.  He is an educated man earning his living as a musician.  Having been born free in the North, slavery has never touched his life directly, and he does his best to ignore the signs of it pressing up against the edges of his world.  His life is shattered, however, when he’s stolen from his family and sold as chattel.  For the next twelve brutal years of his life, Solomon is a commodity to be used, traded, and tortured.  His various owners and overseers tear at his dignity, and Solomon does what he must in order to survive and eventually regain his freedom.

 

Understandably, it’s a difficult film to watch, but it fires on all cylinders right out of the gate.  The direction and writing are somehow both highly emotional and starkly unsentimental; whether Solomon is enraged, despairing, terrified, or battered down, these feelings are etched plainly across the screen.  However, the atrocities committed on the plantations are filmed with a dispassionate nonchalance that serves to highlight their horror, because it shows are commonplace and day-to-day beatings, rapes, and lynchings were in the antebellum South.  

 

I’ve liked Chiwetel Ejiofor since I saw him in Dirty Pretty Things, and he won my allegiance forever for his excellent work as the Operative in Serenity.  He’s jaw-drop stunning here; he carries the film through the nightmare of his enslaved life, and his eyes speak volumes.  A number of other fine actors give strong performances – Quvenzhané Wallis (Hushpuppy from Beasts of the Southern Wild,) Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, and Brad Pitt are all featured – but it’s Ejiofor’s film hands-down.  His performance in the final scene left me reeling.  Truly stellar.

 

(Oh, and since I mentioned the assorted well-known white actors in the movie, I just have to say – I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to play these sorts of roles.  Obviously, the black actors have a tremendously hard job as well, but it must feel sickening to deliver those awful lines, to let the N-word roll off one’s tongue, and to convincingly portray such inhuman attitudes.  It’s a tough issue, because it’s a powerful story that’s important to be told, but if I were one of them, especially Sarah Paulson or Michael Fassbender, I don’t think I physically could have done it.)

 

Though I alluded to it above, I’ve not really touched on the way the film addresses the psychological implications of slavery.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie deal so closely with the complexities of this issue.  It’s a big topic, though, and I’ve already rambled quite a bit.  Check in tomorrow, when I’ll focus on these aspects of the film.

 

Warnings

 

Violence, including vicious beatings, attempted murder, and sexual assault.  Also, nudity, racial slurs, and horrifically racist viewpoints.