New bio-pic is though-provoking, but not without noticeable mistakes
British director Steve McQueen directed this searing dramatic biopic based on the life of a free African-American man from the North named Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who was kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years. He was a well-respected violinist with a wife and two children from Saratoga Springs, New York, who was tricked by two white men (Scoot McNairy and Taran Killam) who had heard of his expert musical skills and convinced him to join them for a brief run with a traveling circus. In actuality, he was drugged, captured, chained and sent to New Orleans where he was treated as a common slave and renamed Platt.
Solomon and a young woman, Eliza (Adepero Oduye), who gets separated from her children, are sold by Freeman (Paul Giamatti), a businessman whose “sentimentality extends the length of a coin” to Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), a man who, given the circumstances, seems more decent than most of the other white people, even though he is obviously a disgusting human being for buying slaves. He might not beat the slaves personally and he might appear compassionate to them, but he passes on the abuse and power to his slave drivers, including Tibeats (Paul Dano). Solomon is a such good worker (but always, remember, a slave) that Ford gives him a violin of his own to keep.
The threatening and constantly angry Tibeats is so enraged at the humanity Ford shows toward the slaves that he becomes determined to kill Solomon. For his safety, Ford sells Solomon to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a sadistic plantation owner. He is a pure, unadulterated, evil monster with no redeeming qualities who will yell or attack at any minute. His wife, Mary (Sarah Paulson), with her hair tied up in a bun and emotionless, blank face, is just as cruel but she spouts her vile hatred and evil with a chilling composure. The focus of the film is Solomon’s story, but possibly the most tragic character in the film is Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). She picks more cotton for Master Epps than any other slave, but she is physically and sexually abused by her owner to the point where she does not want to live.
McQueen is an artist who began his career creating art installations before going into film. He has a painterly eye and his work has a precision and power that is overpowering and hard to forget. “12 Years a Slave” is absolutely the work of a mature filmmaker, and the film is intense, difficult and troubling, as it should be. However, his first two films “Hunger” and “Shame,” which also star Michael Fassbender, are more uncompromising, noncommercial works of art. They have a detached style and almost clinical approach to their subjects. In “Hunger,” Fassbender plays a real-life member of the IRA who goes on a hunger strike to protest while in jail, and in “Shame,” he plays a sex addict whose carnal urges are destroying his life. “Slave” suffers from attempting to mesh the emotional, harrowing realism of Solomon’s story with the impersonal directorial flourishes of McQueen’s previous films. Some of the most searing moments in the film happen when McQueen lets the camera stay still for a minute or more at a time without cutting. In one scene, Solomon is hanging from a noose tied to a tree, and he is barely able to raise his body up with the tips of his toes to breathe. The slaves around him come out of their shacks and go about their jobs knowing that they dare not help him. A moment such as that would fit nicely in McQueen’s other films.
Compared to almost every film that plays in wide release these days, “Slave” is harsh and brave, but compared to his previous films, it feels a little too safe and a little bit too much like Oscar bait.
There is not one bad performance in the film and many that deserve Oscar nominations (especially Ejiofor, Fassbender, Nyong’o, and Paulson), but there are too many familiar faces that pop up in one or two scenes. The stark realism is somewhat diminished when one notices Brad Pitt with a funny beard. Besides him, there is not a specific actor or actress that draws the audience out of the film, but all the familiar faces become distracting.
The score by Hans Zimmer, who is probably best known for his booming “Inception” score, becomes overwhelming and noticeable. In scenes that are heated and where violence is on the verge of erupting, Zimmer inserts thundering musical cues between the dialogue like godly punctuation. The scenes are gripping enough without needing the score to pull the audience around emotionally.
The dialogue itself is too often ham-fisted and sounds like a screenwriter’s words about slavery in the 21st century. Pitt’s character’s conversation with Solomon, where he tells him that he believes slavery is wrong, rings false. It is as if the filmmakers were patting the audience on the back saying that not every white person was a horrible racist. Even though many scenes in the film transport the audience back to the past, the very visual direction and towering performances are so strong that the dialogue is secondary.
Since this film is based on an actual story, revealing the ending is not really a spoiler. Solomon returns to his family at the end of the film after twelve years of enslavement. There is a queasy tidiness to the film’s resolution that feels too comforting. “Schindler’s List” has the same problem. Yes, the Holocaust and slavery were complete and utter failures of humanity on an enormous scale, but it is all OK in the end because one man saves a couple of thousand Jews, and Solomon reunites with his family. “Slave” goes on for more than two unrelenting hours exposing the horrors of slavery, but then Solomon just goes home and has a big group hug with his family. Everyone in the audience can go home and feel better. But Patsey is still on that plantation with Epps and millions of Jews still died.
“Slave” is a film that every member of the human race should see and discuss. Wikipedia may not be the most reliable source for information, but it has lists of films that deal with American slavery. In more than 100 years of cinema, only 25 films have been released that have dealt with the subject. Three of them are adaptations of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and six of them are exploitation films along with a pastiche of them, “Django Unchained.” Included are films such as “Lincoln” and “Gone with the Wind,” which deal with slavery but are certainly not focused on the day-to-day lives of slaves. In a post-Trayvon Martin, Obama-led America, a film such as “12 Years a Slave” is as relevant and thought-provoking as ever. It might stir up emotions and debate, and it might not be a perfect film, but it is a beautifully rendered portrait of a painful part of America’s past that has rarely surfaced in film.