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

The Butler - Review

Director: Lee Daniels Writer: Danny Strong Studios: The Weinstein Company, ShowmakerWorks Pictures, Laura Ziskin Productions, Windy Hill Pictures Cast: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo Release Date (UK): 15 November 2013 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 132 min

The previous movie from prestigious master of excess Lee Daniels, namely the polarising 2012 Cannes splash “The Paperboy,” was a most bizarre and rather intoxicating concoction, a thick blend of blood, sweat and Floridian swamp gunk. Relatively speaking, his latest movie, the newly released supposed Oscar candidate “The Butler,” is a much more conventional affair, but in its own little way it too is rather strange, if ironically for reasons that are altogether more unconventional (“The Paperboy” being more conventionally weird, most notably thanks to an already infamous scene in which Nicole Kidman pisses on Zac Efron’s face).

“The Butler” is strange in the sense that it wishes to be two different movies with two different ambitions: on the one hand, it wishes to be a gentle, warm-hearted story about a White House butler, played by Forest Whitaker, who watches his country change around him as he serves seven US presidents, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan — the sort of light, Academy-friendly film that’ll play well on a wet Sunday afternoon. On the other hand, it also wishes to be a hard-hitting history lesson exposing the grim and violent realities faced by backers of the civil rights movement, as seen through the eyes of the butler’s political activist son, played by David Oyelowo. The mix is a peculiar and uneven one but not without charm as Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong explore the entirety of the turbulent African American experience in the 20th century through the lives of and tension between a butler and his son.

The film, as it so proudly states in its opening, is inspired by a true story, that of former White House butler Eugene Allen, who served eight, rather than seven, American presidents over the course of 34 years. Here, his name has been changed to Cecil Gaines and his story has been tinkered with, fictionalised for dramatic purposes. For example, the film begins with a young Cecil working in a Macon cotton field in 1926 when the white landowner, played by Alex Pettyfer, rapes his mother and murders his father. It’s a powerful scene, but one that has been made up for the movie — Allen grew up on a cotton field in Virginia, not Georgia, and he did not watch his mother being raped nor his father being murdered.

In his teens, Cecil learns the fine art of serving white folks, waits tables at a swanky hotel in Washington D.C. and in 1957 lands a job at the White House as a butler. Here, for over three decades, Cecil serves cookies and slices of toast and stands silently in the corner while the President discusses pressing issues concerning the rights of African Americans. Sometimes he gets to speak with the President about these issues, and sometimes his words have an influence on the course of history. As happens when Cecil has a brief conversation with Eisenhower, played by a bald-capped Robin Williams, about his son attending an “all-coloured” school, after which Eisenhower feels compelled to enforce racial integration in a Little Rock high school.

This happens time and time again throughout the movie: walking into the Oval Office with a tea tray in hand, Cecil witnesses first-hand pretty much every significant political decision concerning civil rights. You can practically see Daniels and Strong sticking a flagpole in each of the relevant historical events and then planning out how to get Cecil to reach each point and how he will effect or be effected by them. These parts of the film are essentially “Forrest Gump” in the White House, only without that film’s jokey sense of humour about its various historical contrivances but instead with a treacly sincerity.

These scenes are also marred by a series of increasingly silly cameos by Hollywood stars who come in one by one latexed up as the various Presidents of the United States — Williams as Eisenhower, James Marsden as wonder boy JFK, Liev Schreiber barking orders from the toilet as Lyndon B. Johnson, John Cusack as the ever-perspiring Tricky Dick and Alan Rickman as a barely human Ronald Reagan (but curiously no Ford or Carter). Smothered in prosthetics and looking like they’ve turned up to a fancy dress party, their caricature performances threaten to undo what drama is present in these scenes (though Marsden’s JFK impersonation is spot-on).

I found myself more interested in the more intimate moments at the Gaines household, with Oprah Winfrey sublime as Cecil’s long-suffering wife Gloria, and the sub-plot focused on Cecil’s fiercely liberal teenage son Louis, who, against the wishes of his father, heads down south to fight for racial equality. From the latter, Daniels wrings a handful of very effective and emotionally powerful scenes: e.g. a peaceful sit-in at a segregated Nashville diner which turns sickeningly violent and another scene in which Louis and his friends are viciously attacked by Ku Klux Klan members while travelling on a bus to Alabama.

These are shocking scenes, made more so by the fact that the events they depict really did happen 50 years ago (only here with the fictional Louis dropped in; apparently he was by Martin Luther King’s side in his hotel room right before he was shot dead). Comparatively, the scenes at 1600 Penn, which make up the bulk of the movie, seem awfully tame and lacking in a certain dramatic heft. Carried along by Whitaker’s wise and restrained performance and not much else, they feel a little empty, much as Rodrigo Leao’s sweeping, triumphant score tries to convince us otherwise.

I did like “The Butler:” its message of fighting for your rights is inspiring, it’s elegantly directed by Daniels and the performances of Whitaker, Winfrey and Oyelowo are very fine indeed. But after the trashy, unhinged melodrama of “The Paperboy” and the harsh, emotional rawness of “Precious,” this does seem like awfully safe territory for Daniels, too schmaltzy for its subject matter and, if I may be so blunt, quite Oscar-baity. Indeed, it has travelled across the US and now the UK accompanied with Winfrey singing its praises, a tactic which may well catch the Academy’s attention. Hopefully it does for the film’s performances, but as for the film itself, I’ve heard that a certain Steve McQueen drama also about African American hardships is more deserving of attention.

Rating: 6/10

Rush - Review

Director: Ron Howard Writer: Peter Morgan Studios: StudioCanal, Exclusive Media, Revolution Films, Working Title Films, Imagine Entertainment, Relativity Media, Cross Creek Pictures Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brühl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara Release Date (UK): 13 September 2013 Certificate: 15 Runtime: 122 min

One of the best films of the year is “Rush,” director Ron Howard’s mesmerising chronicle of the heated rivalry between legendary Formula 1 race car drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda. And two of the best performances of the year come from Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl as Hunt and Lauda, respectively, who are so perfectly cast in their roles that in the film’s closing moments, when stock footage of the actual Hunt and Laudu are presented to us, we can barely tell them apart from their real-life counterparts.

For a film about cars going around in circles, “Rush” is oddly, stupendously riveting. It opens on the fateful date of 1 August 1976, when the heavens opened up to pour down onto the Nürburgring track at the German Grand Prix, before jumping back to 1970 when a risky manoeuvre by Hunt on a Formula Three track results in Lauda's defeat and sparks their six-year tug of war. Their differences are immediately noticeable: Hunt, a prep schooled Brit, is an arrogant, blonde-locked hunk (not a world away from Hemsworth’s role in Marvel’s “Thor”) always surrounded by fawning admirers; Lauda, an Austrian engineering wiz, is a loner, coldly calculating and generally unlikeable, and is described by Hunt, not inaccurately, as having rat-like features.

Their attitudes towards racing differ greatly. Hunt believes that all that is required is simple speed, while Lauda, criticising Hunt for being too aggressive, believes there's so much more to it than that: “To be a champion, it takes more than just being quick,” he says. "It's the whole picture." But they have their similarities: both are rebels, racing against the wishes of their wealthy families, and both are brilliant racers who wish to become the F1 World Champion, no matter the cost. Screenwriter Peter Morgan, Oscar-nominated for “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon,” charts their rivalry as they compete against each other across the globe, both usually finishing first or second, as well as detailing their shaky love lives — ever the womaniser, Hunt has a fling with a nurse played by Natalie Dormer and later weds supermodel Suzy Miller, played by Olivia Wilde, while Lauda falls for socialite Marlene Knaus, played by Alexandra Maria Lara.

Howard, who propels the story with roaring horsepower, recreates each race, and indeed each crash, with breathtaking intensity. We are given front-row seats, watching the action through both racers’ helmets, listening to their calm, controlled breathing over the almighty roar of the engine and watching them swiftly calculate their every last-second move — we the audience feel like we are racing in their cars with them, and boy, what a rush it is. Perhaps my lack of prior knowledge concerning the true events aided in my immersion: knowing that every corner of every lap is a potential death trap and that any minor miscalculation could mean a driver's fiery end, I feared for their lives at every turn, waiting for that fatal error — if there was to be one — to finally be made.

It’s of note that the film doesn’t pick a side. The posters, flaunting Hemsworth’s golden good looks, would have you believe that it is Hunt who is the hero and Lauda who is the villain. On the contrary, there is no clear hero or villain in this fact-based sports tale, the film instead leaving us to choose who to root for as these two petrol heads go head to head. I found myself rooting for Lauda: of the two, he suffers the most throughout the story, of which his side is the most tragic. It's to his credit that in playing such a humourless, uptight character, Brühl earns our sympathy. I'll be surprised if he's not up for an Oscar this coming February.

Here we have a powerful study on the nature of obsession. Hunt and Lauda are men obsessed: obsessed with beating each other and obsessed with winning the top prize, risking their lives for the sake of a trophy and their name on the top of a scoreboard. Towards the film’s end, a breaking point is reached, and here the film breaks from Hollywood formula: is the quest for gold really worth risking your life, the film questions, and the answer, surprisingly, is rather ambiguous.

I walked into “Rush" knowing next to nothing about the true story of James Hunt and Niki Lauda and without the slightest interest in motor racing. I walked out feeling exhilarated and eager to find out more about this remarkable piece of sporting history. This is studio entertainment at its finest, and like the extraordinary 2010 documentary “Senna,” also about a Formula 1 legend, it had my heart pounding and made me shed a tear at the races. Who knew watching cars going around in circles could be so emotional?

Rating: 10/10

Lovelace - Review

Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman Writer: Andy Bellin Studios: Millennium Films, Radius-TWC Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Adam Brody, Juno Temple Release Date (UK): 23 August 2013 Certificate: 18 Runtime: 92 min

Co-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman struggle to conjure a compelling human drama from the fascinating life story of legendary adult actress Linda Lovelace in this bog-standard, ironically impotent biopic of the ‘70s porn sensation. Based on Lovelace’s 1980 biography “Ordeal,” it casts Amanda Seyfried as the foxy, freckle-faced Floridian who, at the age of 23, became a pop culture icon when she starred and showed off her — ahem — keen oral skills in the 1972 adult movie theatre phenomenon “Deep Throat.” Epstein and Friedman’s film charts her overnight rise from shy, suburban unknown to world-famous household name, along the way chronicling her increasingly troubled relationship with her controlling and abusive husband/manager Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard).

Seyfried is well cast in the title role, boasting both the fragility and sensuality, if not the girl-next-door looks, of the real-life Lovelace, while Sarsgaard initially charms before frightening in later scenes when Linda rebels against Chuck’s domineering ways and he viciously bites back. The true nature of their relationship is revealed quite cleverly, when the film rewinds itself halfway through to show us that earlier, ostensibly lighthearted events on- and off-set may not have been as pleasant — nor, indeed, as voluntary —as they first appeared.

It’s an intriguing story, and one littered with contradictions over the years, but there’s little on show here that you won’t already find on Lovelace’s Wikipedia page. Andy Bellin’s script tries but fails to get underneath Lovelace’s skin, instead portraying her as a one-dimensional victim, and whatever insight it has into the ups and downs of the ‘70s porn industry was already explored with much more power and panache in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic and enthralling “Boogie Nights.” “Lovelace” is certainly not terrible — Seyfried and Sarsgaard’s performances are too good for that — but it’s too basic to be fully satisfying and too “TV movie of the week” to really do justice to such a fascinating figure.

Rating: 5/10