12 Years a Slave - Review

Director: Steve McQueen Writer: John Ridley Studios: Summit Entertainment, Regency Enterprises, Film4, RiverRoad Entertainment, Plan B Entertainment Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt Release Date (UK): 10 January 2014 Certificate: 15 Runtime: 133 min

The brutality of Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” is merciless, as it should be. The slave masters showed no mercy in the treatment of their slaves — why should McQueen? For we the audience’s comfort? For the sake of our squeamishness? Or perhaps because such depictions are, say certain individuals, inherently cruel and sadistic? Some have complained that the film’s depiction of this ugly time in American history is “too much,” that it should be toned down. To hell with that — this is the hard and painful truth, and McQueen portrays the terror and the pain in all its grim detail.

This is a tough watch, partly because the violence is so uncompromisingly graphic and visceral, partly because we know that these atrocities truly did occur and on such an enormous scale and for such a long period of time. It’s based on an extraordinary true story, that of Solomon Northup, a free-born African American carpenter, violinist and family man who in 1841 was drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery in New Orleans. Stripped of his identity and forced to pick away at cotton fields, he faced horrors and inhumanities no man should ever have to face: lynchings, whippings, beatings, for twelve whole years. In 1853, Solomon wrote an account of his horrifying ordeals in his memoir “Twelve Years a Slave,” and now Steve McQueen brings his story to the big screen.

Solomon Northup is an unsung hero of history, for what he suffered through, for how he endured and for how he shared his story — how he’s not remembered alongside Anne Frank is a mystery to me. Here, he’s played by the great British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who fully inhabits Solomon’s strength, hope and dignity, and how they are slowly but surely beaten out of him throughout his time working on the plantations of the South. Ejiofor is an immensely versatile actor — he’s always terrific, be it in rom-coms or sci-fi flicks — and here he gives his best and most nuanced performance to date; it’s astonishing how much emotion he can project with just a glance, a quiver of his lips or a determined stare down the camera lens.

On a ship on the way to New Orleans, a fellow chained slave advises Solomon to keep his head down, to feign illiteracy and avoid attention if he wishes to survive. “I don’t want to survive, I want to live,” is his stern response. Initially, Solomon is sold to the slaver William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), who, compared to other slavers, seems relatively nice; he recognises that the slaves are human and appears to sympathise with them, even if he does have them slaving away on his field. But after a confrontation with Paul Dano’s cruel and racist farmhand — whose taunting, hand-clapping rendition of Run, Nigger, Run haunts the mind long after viewing — Solomon is sold to the maniacal Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a proud “nigger breaker” whose beating and lashing of his slaves is, according to him at least, God’s will. Surviving, it seems, may be Solomon’s only option.

I’d call Epps terrifying, but he seems the sort who’d revel in such a description, so instead I’ll call him psychotic; he’s prone to fits of uncontrollable rage and is the epitome of the evil, the sliminess and the hate we associate with slave owners; Fassbender, as you would expect, is brilliantly diabolical. Each night, Epps sneaks into the bed of the young slave girl Patsey and forces himself upon her; later, he strips her, ties her to a post and savagely whips her. Patsey is played by Lupita Nyong’o, a Kenyan actress in her first film role, and she is a revelation. We all know of the skills of Ejiofor and Fassbender, but not of this newcomer, who is sensational in portraying her character's initial sturdiness and increasing fragility. The scene in which she is whipped is one of the most heartbreaking scenes I have ever witnessed — it is one of many in the film.

Epps is sadistic, and in depicting his and his ilk’s sadism, McQueen himself has been accused of being sadistic. This is wrong; while it is true that McQueen dwells on his characters’ pain — as he does in an unflinching and unblinking take in which Solomon, barely standing on the tips of his toes, hangs by the neck, choking on his breath while the daily life of the plantation continues on behind him — he does not revel in it. He is merely depicting what must be depicted. Take, for example, the scene in which Patsey is whipped; McQueen makes a clear point of turning the camera away from Epps and Solomon to instead watch Patsey, specifically the skin of her back as it is torn apart by the force of the whip. McQueen is not gaining sick pleasure from this; rather, his camera looks upon it with horror. But it does not look elsewhere; McQueen knows that it is his duty as a storyteller to show what happened as it happened, no shying away. It’s tough to face (I for one could barely stand to witness it), but this, McQueen says, is real history in all its inhuman horror.

I’ve said several times in this review that “12 Years a Slave” is often difficult to watch, and it is. But this is not a torture porn movie, as the buffoon Armond White has ignorantly asserted; Ejiofor’s performance is far too moving, the story is far too powerful and the brutality cuts too deep for the film to sink to such murky depths. This is a film that must be seen, for its truth, for its passion, for its beauty, but most of all for its raw power. If there’s one flaw, it’s that at the film’s end there appears text outlining the events in the aftermath of Solomon’s imprisonment; how, pray tell, does McQueen expect me to read this when I have tears in my eyes?

Rating: 10/10