Movies are typically transient endeavors. They’re disposable
little nuggets of entertainment that require nothing more than a seat, a dark
room and an open set of eyes. They ask nothing of us but to sit, listen and
watch. At a movie’s conclusion, we abandon the movie’s fading image on the
screen, tip-toe over the scattered popcorn, walk to our cars and continue on
with our lives.
Every now and again, we see a good one that we take home with us.
We’ll laugh at its premise, or discuss the merits of its themes or plot. Or
just admire its likable and pleasing stars.
Only rarely do we see movies that inform our views of the world,
movies that cauterize into us the emotions of their players, movies that open
our hearts and minds to a humanity we had not yet considered. These transcend
the term “movie” to become part of our personal and cultural DNA.
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a
Slave is one of those rare movies. It does more than just dance light on a
screen. It asks us to bear witness to America ’s greatest shame, slavery, and also its greatest trait,
hope.
The movie is based on a book by Solomon Northup, a free-born
black violin player in 1841. Solomon, played here by acting powerhouse Chiwetel
Ejiofor, is a respected and well-spoken resident of Saratoga , N.Y. Washington ,
D.C.
Solomon is sucked into a ruthless trade, one in which white businessmen kidnap and sell black men, women and children out of the northern states so
they can be funneled down into the South, where slavery’s scourge is legal and
thriving. In a grotesquely depressing sequence, Solomon and dozens of other
kidnapped souls are held in a house that serves as a showroom for prospective
buyers. The slaves are naked, and frequently slapped and poked, like your dad kicking that Buick's tires on the lot before the big purchase. White landowners come in and gaze at these terrified human beings as if
they’re farm equipment — and essentially they are. One man can afford a woman,
but not her child. Screams fill the house as the family is torn apart. “My
sentimentality extends the length of a coin,” the slave trader tells her.
Eventually, Solomon ends up on the farm of a man named Ford
(Benedict Cumberbatch), who treats his slaves with a semblance of dignity and
respect. Unfortunately for the slaves, Ford is a busy man, so he delegates much
of his farm’s oversight to Tibeats (Paul Dano), a vindictive and petty man who
clearly just wants to see men bleed and suffer. The movie is full of these
types, and I shudder to think of a third of this beautiful country pockmarked
with gaping voids of hate and bigotry like Tibeats. To Dano’s credit, his character
is so effective, he’ll make blood boil.
As the movie crawls forward — never flinching away from the
whippings, beatings and hangings — we get a sense for what slave life must have
been like: tedious, back-breaking work all day followed by quiet periods for
meals and sleep late in the evening. Solomon spends much of his free time
reflecting on his terrible circumstances — “I don’t want to survive. I want to
live.” — and also plotting an escape that never materializes. He has many
chances, but the plantation is big; the South is even bigger. He is told by others to not to let anyone know he can read and write, or they'll treat him suspiciously. The first chance gets he steals some paper to write a letter home; the only ink he has is blackberry juice.
The movie is directed by Steve McQueen, whose films (Hunger, Shame) offer stark, detached glimpses of terrible chapters in the
lives of men. Even amid his large sets, the convincing period clothing and the era-appropriate
dialogue, it’s obvious McQueen is a minimalist at heart. He doesn’t punctuate
his scenes, or let them get too loud or flashy. They are shot simply, but
effectively. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Ford’s farm: Solomon, a noose
around his neck, is left hanging from a tree branch, his toes scraping the dirt
just enough to keep him from choking to death. He hangs and hangs. The shadows
change, indicating the passage of hours. Slaves wash and dry clothes behind
him. Children play in the field. Birds chip. Cicadas buzz. And still he hangs,
gasping for breath. It’s one of the most horrifying scenes in the movie, and
yet it shows the very essence of McQueen’s work — understatement. It also helps
that Ejiofor is so understanding of his character and the barbaric conditions
he must suffer through.
Michael Fassbender, McQueen’s frequent muse, turns up late in the
movie as the slave owner Epps, a monster even by Tibeats’ standards. On his
farm, the beatings are more frequent, the whippings more savage and the
conditions more degrading. Even Epps’ wife, a real peach of a woman, is some
kind of twisted abomination. She lobs a decanter at a slave’s head so hard it
nearly kills her. The audience I saw the film with recoiled so violently, the
air seemed to be sucked out of the theater.
Several writers before me are calling 12 Years a Slave the Schindler’s
List of slavery. I must agree. Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust film framed
Nazi atrocities in a historical, but also emotional, context. It was shown in
classrooms and aired unedited on television. It became a learning movie. To begin
to understand what happened during the Holocaust, we had to witness its cruel
awfulness. Riding similar principles, 12
Years a Slave might be the definitive movie about slavery. You simply must
see it. Take your teens and, if they’re ready for it, your older children. We
must not ignore this country’s great shame. We must confront it. And this movie bares its soul to history's ugly details. We've never seen slavery like this. Certainly television's Roots laid the foundation. (In many ways, Roots is to 12 Years a Slave what Shoah was to Schindler's List.) Django Unchained, for all its commentary about slavery, was not exactly historically accurate . 12 Years is going to be the first time you see some of these images, and you will wince and flinch.
Now, before I close, a word on two performances: Chiwetel Ejiofor
and Lupita Nyong’o. Remember these names. We’ve seen Ejiofor before, in Children of Men, Salt and Love, Actually.
He will win an Academy Award for this gripping portrayal of hope and survival.
Nyong’o plays the character Patsey, whose story is representative of the slaves
who didn’t escape. Because for every Solomon, there are thousands upon
thousands of Patseys.
12 Years a Slave is one
of the best movies of the year and, hand’s down, the most important. Go to the
theater to witness it, but don’t treat it like a movie. It’s bigger and better
than that. It’s the shame of this county’s past, but the hope of its future.
