12 Years a Slave

The Best Picture winner at this year's Academy Awards and deservedly so.  12 Years a Slave is brutal, beautiful, and haunting.

The film is based on a memoir.  It is the story of Solomon Northup, a freeman living in New York.  He is convinced by con men to travel to Washington, D.C. where he is placed in bondage and sold into slavery in Louisiana.  He must use (as well as hide) his considerable intelligence in order to survive.

There has been so much written about this film already that I feel as if I have nothing new to contribute to the discussion.  I can, however, contribute my love for this film. 

Steve McQueen is a director who makes films that focus on pain.  12 Years a Slave is his third picture and easily his best (although Hunger is my favorite).  McQueen has a way of lingering on moments of intense brutality and hurt.  He doesn't cut away and he doesn't sugarcoat it.  But people don't want to see terrible acts.  We avoid it.  We turn away.  McQueen understands this, so he makes his films incredibly pretty.  The compositions, the framing, the lighting.  These all come together to create a distance that the audience can place between themselves and the horrors onscreen.  We can all appreciate the brilliant filmmaking and that entices us to keep watching despite the tragedy unfolding before us.

I find it interesting that two of the best examinations of American slavery on film have come from English filmmakers.  Of course 12 Years a Slave is one, and C.S.A. is the other (a faux-documentary that posits how the Unites States would be had the South won the Civil War).  Is that because we are not ready or willing to take an honest look at the most shameful thing in our brief history as a country?  Maybe.  Even Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, while fun, only dealt with slavery under the veneer of Italian exploitation films.  The brutal moments are reminiscent of Addio Zio Tom (not for the faint of heart) as opposed to any honesty.  And then Django enacts a cathartic revenge for those wrongs à la spaghetti westerns.  There is no catharsis in 12 Years a Slave.  Terrible things are done to innocent people and no one is punished for it.  American audiences crave swift justice.  That's why villains in action movies are never arrested, they are killed.  We need that closure.  12 Years a Slave is not excessively violent.  It's the oppressive need for justice, which never arrives, that makes the film such a heart-breaking and intense experience.

As usual, Steve McQueen has made a film full of staggering performances.  Chiwetel Ejiofor should have won Best Actor.  There's no contest between his portrayal of Solomon Northup and Matthew McConaughey's Ron Woodroof.  Lupita Nyong'o is a force to be reckoned with.  She's incredible.  Michael Fassbender is always fantastic (even in the horrific Jonah Hex).  Other notable performances come from Paul Dano, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, and Paul Giamatti.  Oddly enough, Brad Pitt is terrible.  Thankfully, he's barely in it.

This is a film for the ages.  The music is perfect.  The camerawork is perfect.  The acting is perfect (except Brad Pitt).  I will be revisiting 12 Years a Slave many more times.  It's a film that needs to be watched.  Do not miss it.  To use an old movie critic cliché: if you only see one movie this year, make it 12 Years a Slave!

9.5 out of 10