12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave
Please
note this essay does discuss the entire film so please avoid until
after seeing the film if you do not want the end or key scenes spoiled
12
Years a Slave is Steve McQueen’s film adaptation of Solomon Northup’s
memoir about a free black musician in 1841 who lived in Saratoga
Springs, New York who was kidnapped, sold into slavery and sent to work
on various plantations in Louisiana where he remained for 12 years until
he was able to prove his status as a free man and secure his release. The film is pretty faithful to the book, which is told in the first person. I have not seen Hunger or Shame, Steve McQueen’s other two films. The
cast includes: Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul
Dano, Michael Fassbender, Luipta Nyong’o, Sarah Paulson, Alfre Woodard
and Brad Pitt. I knew prior to seeing this film that it would be
uncomfortable at times but one scene, in particular, to be discussed
later, far surpassed any of my expectations.
After
seeing the film Django Unchained last year I had felt it wrong that,
while I knew the broad strokes of slavery from having studied American
History in high school and college, my first real look on the big screen
had come in a film that certainly took the slaves’ side but treated the
whole slavery issue as an excuse for bloody revenge. Also
instead of seeing much of the day to day life of a slave, which is what
would have intrigued me, apart from an opening sequence of Django being
marched with several other slaves across a long distance, most of the
focus on the slaves’ lives was on the Mandingo fights, which is they
occurred at all, which is highly questionable, would have been within very small circles. Dramatically
the fights made Leonardo DiCaprio’s character much nastier and
Inglourious Basterds proved that director Quentin Tarantino will deviate
from history if he feels like it. Perhaps
it was wrong of me to expect anything different from Tarantino’s take
on slavery but I still feel that Django Unchained is excessively and
needlessly bloody and the construction of the third act is very lazy. I am still it amazed it won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. However seeing it did provoke my interest in seeing a serious take on the subject. I never got around to watching Roots but it made me very glad to see 12 Years a Slave approach the subject seriously.
The poster for 12 Years a Slave depicts Solomon running which I find a curious choice. It
suggests that Solomon ultimately escaped his ordeal by running away as
many slaves did (and many more were ultimately recaptured). While
there is a brief scene of Solomon attempting to flee he quickly stops
when he sees two slaves from a different plantation being hung for
trying the same thing. The book describes his thoughts in more detail. Solomon realizes his best chance to get back to his family is to find a way to prove who he actually is to the authorities. The fact that it is so hard for Solomon to do so is somewhat fascinating to me. Even
prisoners usually are able to correspond with people and under such
circumstances one would think as an American Solomon should have been
able to send letters but the slaves were treated as property with no
rights even though, unlike prisoners, they were able to walk around.
While
slavery existed in other countries in the time period of this film
(1841 to 1853) it was largely absent from developed countries and was
illegal north of Mason Dixon line. The invention of cotton gin by Eli Whitney in the late 18th century led to a huge production of cotton at the time. The
cotton was processed the South, and picked by hand, and kept alive the
need for slaves in the eyes of the plantation owners, to support their
economy. In the beginning of the film Solomon
seems to have a nice family life in Saratoga Springs as a part of
upper class society. I imagine he must have faced some sort of racism (which the film never shows) but his freedom would never have been threatened. As Solomon gradually enters slave life we see how he is stripped of his
identity (he literally has it beaten out of him) so that we as the
viewer see the distinction between a free person and a slave.
The
Constitution prohibited slave importation starting in 1808 so despite
the kidnappings the vast majority of slaves by the 1840s born as such
and had never known any other life. The approach of this
story is unique since we see Solomon start as a free man and enter
slavery which makes it more dramatic for the audience than in we simply
saw a man born into it. Solomon
knows what freedom is, is more educated and cultured than many of his
captors and is sustained by the hope of somehow exiting his slave
life and rejoining his family.
One of the unique aspects of this very American story is the international talents behind it. Steve McQueen is dark skinned but British, as is Chiwetel Ejiofor (his family is from Nigeria). Benedict Cumberbatch, playing a southern plantation owner is also British. Michael Fassbender is German-Irish and grew up in Europe. Lupita Nyong’o is from Kenya. The rest of the cast is American but they are all supporting players. I forgot the nationalities of everyone while watching the film and just got completely caught up their stories. Only
Brad Pitt, who is fine in his brief but crucial role in the third act,
is such a familiar face that since we are introduced to him late in the
story his star power overwhelms his character. If he had shown up earlier I would have been able to buy into his character’s story a little more.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is wonderful as Solomon. He
has big expressive eyes and a calm dignity that forces him to recognize
his situation but refuses to be defined by his ordeal. He has relatively
little dialogue since he is often hiding his true identity and
especially on the Epps plantation, hiding his intellect since revealing
it to the massively insecure Master Epps (more on him to come) would
probably mean his death. When Solomon uses his sophisticated language and powerful voice the effect is magnetic. Even though he is the quietest one many of the scenes my eyes always went to him in a two-shot. Ejiofor’s
performance in the scenes where he lets himself enjoy the music of Roll
Jordan Roll is very moving and his eagerness to suddenly leave the
plantation at the end (he can barely keep himself from running full
blast) and the reunion scene with his family are standout moments.
Benedict
Cumberbatch is
fascinating in his complicated role as Master Ford, Solomon’s first
owner. He is a more humane master (foreshadowed earlier by
Solomon’s shipmate who eagerly runs back to his master when discovered)
and respects Solomon. Of course he separates a woman from her children and though he and his wife feel bad about it he does nothing to rectify it. When
Solomon fights with Tibeats (played by Paul Dano as yet another
of his twisted weaklings-see There Will Be Blood, Cowboys and Aliens,
Prisoners) Ford frees him from the hanging only when no one else is
looking and hides Solomon in his house. Ford seems to feel that he cannot let other people see him treat Solomon as a friend due to his place in society. When Solomon pleads with Ford by telling him he, Solomon, is free, Ford refuses to listen. Of
course, Ford has the power to free Solomon but that would force him to face the darkness inside of
himself as a slave owner, would hurt him financially, and might cause
him to lose station in his racist society. Cumberbatch
plays these conflicts wonderfully and I wondered how he must have felt
after Ford “saves” Solomon by selling him to the sadistic Master Epps,
played by Michael Fassbender.
Michael Fassbender has been rising steadily in status over the past four or five years (and is an admitted man crush Filmspotting
podcast host Adam Kempenar) but of his films I have only seen
Inglourious Basterds in which he held the screen in a long scene as a
British officer impersonating a Nazi, Prometheus, in which he memorably
played an android, and A Dangerous Method where he played a brilliant
but weak Carl Jung to Viggo Mortensen’s Sigmund Freud. I
do want to see some of his other work and from what I have seen so far
he is loaded with talent, plays against his good looks and is completely
void of any kind of vanity.
Master Epps is, after Solomon, the most fascinating character in the film. He
is introduced reading Scripture to his slaves to justify his awful
treatment of them (which contrasts an earlier scene in which Master Ford
warmly reads the Bible to her slaves). The slaves pick
cotton on Epps’ plantation and he has the pounds counted each day and
anyone who has picked less than two hundred pounds is whipped. Epps
regular rapes the best cotton picker on the plantation, a young girl
named Patsy, who he becomes obsessed with. Epps, who is
often seen thrashing about half dressed and drunk, seems a little
threatened by Solomon since he can tell from the way that Solomon
carries himself that Solomon is more than he seems. At
one point, Solomon goes to pick up Patsy at a neighboring
plantation (in which he has an unexpected encounter with a black
character played by Alfre Woodard who has managed to
become a mistress of a plantation with slaves of her own). Upon their
return he says something to Patsy that Epps cannot hear and Epps
desperately attacks Solomon (even running after him barefoot through a
pigsty) dying to know what it is. Epps is completely
frustrated by Patsy because while he can take advantage
of her sexually, beat her, and work her severely hard (and indirectly subject her to the physical abuse of his jealous
wife) he cannot control neither her heart nor her will. This may explain why later in the film he is seen walking with no pants on with a young black girl. I would surmise that Patsy was that girl at one point since she seems to have been born into slavery.
I have a theory that Epps is sterile and his behavior comes out of his aggravation of this. Epps
and his wife have no kids and he has clearly raped Patsy for some time
before Solomon arrives and does so throughout Solomon’s time on the
plantation yet she never becomes pregnant. He also has a scene in which he cruelly makes the exhausted slaves dance for his wife in a vain effort to impress her. During the whipping scene Epps is initially for some reason too weak willed to whip Patsy himself so forces Solomon to do it.
When
Sarah Paulson first appeared on the screen I thought we might get some
relief from the horror of the Epps plantation since she usually plays
sunnier, upbeat characters. However, Mary Epps is bitter and humiliated at the attention her husband openly lavishes on
Patsy. In a scene she
has with Solomon, in which she sends him to the neighboring plantation
to collect Patsy, I thought she might try to force him to sleep with
her, Mary but fortunately the scene does not go in that direction,
probably due to Mary’s own racism.
Every time something disturbing takes place in the film there is a long uncut shot. Solomon’s
first beating (in which his captors are forcing him to relinquish his
name) is uncut, the scene in which he sexually satisfies the unnamed
woman next to him, the hanging scene, the scene in which he fights with
Tibeats, and the whipping scene are all mostly uncut. I
think this is a deliberate choice since as an audience member we want to
look away when it seems uncomfortable but the director will not let us
off the hook. Solomon had to see and is involved in these
acts and since he is the audience surrogate (a free man forced into
slavery as we are in a way for the duration of the film) we have to
endure it as well.
Along
with this theme I must discuss the most controversial scene in the
film, which I did not know about prior to seeing the film. The scene starts with Epps fearful that Patsy has run off and he starts accusing Solomon of assisting her. When
Patsy appears to reveal that she had only gone to a neighboring
plantation to seek a bar of soap (since Mary Epps will not allow her
even one in an attempt to most likely dissuade her husband from finding
Patsy attractive) Epps’ rage grows. When Patsy explains this the scene seems to be building toward Patsy, who is a very tragic presence in the film, showing strength and I felt this might force Epps into perhaps having a moment of pity but this is not a conventional film. At
his wife’s urging (Epps might have backed off if not for Mary being
there) Epps forces Solomon to whip Patsy for quite some time and then
Epps eventually takes over. The scene plays out in real
time and while other films might have cut to afterwards this film lets
the scene play out, mostly in one shot of in front of the post which
Patsy is up against, stripped down, screaming every time the whip snaps,
gradually becoming weaker. Solomon cannot escape this scene and neither can we. It is one of the hardest scenes I have ever had to watch and apparently is pretty true to what happened on that actual day.
I do wonder if did the scene need to be that long and brutal. I
could see an argument for cutting the scene at least somewhat and I can
imagine its cruelty could dissuade repeat viewings but it appears authentic and while I felt uncomfortable watching
it at least it was an honest attempt to portray what actually happened. In contrast the bloodletting in Django Unchained was ugly without artistic merit.
One
of the first scenes shown is in the flash forward in which Solomon, who is happily married, is grabbed while resting by a young woman (who
is clearly also a slave) who puts his hand into her
to bring her to orgasm. The woman is
desperate to feel something positive and Solomon does nothing for
himself but allows her to use his hand to pleasures her and gives
her a kind moment in this horrible environment.
At
the end of the film when Solomon is freed in a scene which brings a
huge release, the film takes a moment to say goodbye to Patsy, who is
stuck there and has no hope of release (until the passage of the 13th Amendment and the end of the Civil War which is another twelve years away). Epps
comes across as utterly pathetic as he futilely tries to prevent
Solomon from leaving and is shocked to learn that Solomon is actually
free, educated and has a family.
Despite the title one never has the sense of how much time is passing. Solomon is a slave
until he can be free.
In
the scene in which Solomon goes home I do wish the camera had lingered
on his family for a moment or two longer so we could take in all of
their reactions to seeing him. I liked that everyone was a
little hesitant since they have been apart for so long but Solomon’s
speech to them (apologizing for his absence and perhaps for the cost to
his family of letting himself get taken advantage of) is heartbreaking.
Hans
Zimmer scored the film and the piece which is Solomon’s main theme is
very similar to the score for the final sequence in Inception, which is a powerful piece of music.
I think this film would make a good companion piece with Lincoln. In
that film Lincoln is resolute that slavery must be ended and there are a
few scenes in which the horror of what Lincoln is fighting against is
described but this film shows it fully and would inform the other one.
In summation 12 Years a Slave is a powerful and occasionally very disturbing look at slavery. I
do not know how soon I would want to watch it again (I also have only
seen Schindler’s List once) but while the film was not light
entertainment I am glad to have had this look what the slave life was
like. May it never reenter this country. ****
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