Brutal, yet beautiful, 12 Years a Slave is a stunning cinematic achievement. The film is based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup, a freeman from New York, who in 1841, was kidnapped and sold into slavery. He spent twelve years in slavery in Louisiana before being freed. It is a harrowing story, and director Steve McQueen does not hold back from showing the violence involved in slavery in graphic detail.
12 Years a Slave has been hailed as the first major film to deal seriously and closely with the issue of slavery in America. Previous films, such as Steven Spielbergs 2012 recent epic bore, Lincoln, and his earlier film Amistad, have tended to focus on the legal and political battles to abolish slavery, and have shied away from showing the brutal realities of slavery. The only film to come close to 12 Years, was last years Django Unchained. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, Django was more of a comic exploitation film and most of the focus was taken by white characters. Leonardo DiCaprio as the slave owner Calvin Candie and Christoph Waltz as the bounty hunter Dr King Schultz were utterly compelling, while the main character, the slave Django, played by Jamie Foxx, appeared underwritten and quite frankly boring.
12 Years a Slave has Solomon Northup, played in a brilliant performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor, squarely at the heart of the film. There are brilliant performances by Michael Fassbender as the sadistic slave owner Epps, and Paul Dano as an overseer, while a number of other big name actors also appear in various roles. But none of these detract from the central character and performance. This film is about the slaves experience and nothing is going to distract the audience from that.
Yet there is also an important tension within the film as Solomon Northup is not always a sympathetic character. There is an important early scene in New York, when Solomon is in a shop. A black slave sees him and is surprised by Solomons ability to live freely. Solomon ignores him and turns away when the slave is called away by his master. Solomon seems to show no sympathy for the plight of slaves until he becomes one. Even then, he is very keen to look out for himself but shows little thought for the suffering of other slaves around him. He refuses to help one of his fellow slaves, who has been raped by Epps, when she asks him to kill her as she cannot go on living. He shows another woman no sympathy when she is distraught having been separated from her children.
When Solomon does attempt to resist the brutality, he is savagely beaten. One particularly stark scene shows Solomon being hung from a tree in retaliation for fighting back against an ignorant overseer. As he struggles to stay alive, by keeping his toes touching the ground, life goes on around him as usual, showing that such brutality was completely normal at the time. One of the reasons that Solomon is so badly treated was because he was clearly an educated man, in the eyes of the racist plantation overseer, Solomon had ideas above his station, he has to be taught a lesson.
Solomon learns early on that he must deny who he is, he must deny his past as a freeman, he must pretend to be illiterate, he has to hide his character.
Some critics have accused the film of being too cold and dispassionate, and that we do not get enough of a sense of Solomon's character. This is understandable though, when Solomon cannot show his true self, through the vast majority of the film he is pretending to be someone he is not.
12 Years a Slave is a very important film, for finally showing the brutal realities of slavery, and the effect it had on its victims. For the first time, audiences are getting to see this in graphic detail, finally such a dark episode in American history, for so long brushed under the carpet, is being shown. It is a shame that it has taken so long, but also that it required an English director, and mostly British production for such a film to be made.
Setting aside the plot and theme, on a purely cinematic level, 12 Years a Slave is also a stunning film. Steve McQueen, is a Turner Prize winning artist, who only turned to feature length film making with his debut Hunger in 2008. His earlier work was mostly in short films and photography and looked at issues of race, sexuality and violence.
McQueen's artistic background is very clear in 12 Years a Slave. His films are known for their long camera shots, close-ups and an almost obsessive attention to the human body. All this features in abundance in 12 Years. McQueen, deliberately compared the visual style of the film to the paintings by the Spanish artist, Francisco Goya:
"When you think about Goya, who painted the most horrendous pictures of violence and torture and so forth, and they're amazing, exquisite paintings, one of the reasons they're such wonderful paintings is because what he's saying is, 'Look – look at this.' So if you paint it badly or put it in the sort of wrong perspective, you draw more attention to what's wrong with the image rather than looking at the image."
The film is a visual feast, making it utterly compelling. It draws the viewer in, and as much as they may want to look away during the scenes of graphic violence, they are unable to. This is important, McQueen is showing something that needs to be seen and thus ties the style in neatly with the thematic importance of the film.
Together with the fantastic performances by a brilliant cast, it is no wonder that 12 Years a Slave is picking up plenty of awards and is the overwhelming favourite to win big at the Oscars. This is a brilliant film, that deserves all the praise it is currently receiving. It may be the first, but hopefully it wont be the last film to properly deal with the issue of slavery in the America's. And while I was impressed by his earlier films, 12 Years a Slave is on another level, and I look forward in earnest to the next film from Steve McQueen.
