Further thoughts on 12 Years a Slave

telegraph.co.uk

Here it is as promised, the ramblings I just know you were all clamoring for.  12 Years a Slave is one of those movies that really gets into your head, and I can’t help thinking about the different ways the major characters are psychologically affected by the institution under which they live.

 

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.

12 Years a Slave (2013, R)

contactmusic.com

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.