OVP: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Film: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’O, Sarah Paulsen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alfre Woodard

Director: Steve McQueen

Oscar History: 9 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture*, Director, Actor-Chiwetel Ejiofor, Supporting Actor-Michael Fassbender, Supporting Actress-Lupita Nyong'o*, Adapted Screenplay*, Costume, Production Design, Film Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Reviewing a film a while after you first see it is a blessing and a curse.  The curse part is obvious-our memories of a film tend to fade quickly after we’ve seen it.  I had a fascinating exercise where I saw a film in my movie class and then had to describe it the next week and I learned how little we actually retain of specific plot details, particularly when you debate plot points that everyone in the room just saw.  I haven’t seen 12 Years in a few weeks, and so I feel like I almost have to revisit it mentally.  I remember what my larger opinions of the film were, but specific plot details will slowly slip from my head as time goes on.  This brings about the blessing part, though-I now know what moments in the movie stuck with me in the way the director, Steve McQueen hoped that they would.

(Again, real life doesn’t really have spoilers, but I’ll issue the alert for those of us that aren’t children of history) The movie shows the story of Solomon Northup (Ejiofor), a real-life free man who was imprisoned for twelve years after being swindled and tricked by a pair of men (whom, we learn in the credits, never paid for their crimes of selling free men into slavery).  The movie is big and unrelenting in its depiction of slavery in the period, and you get the feeling that McQueen is striving to tell one of those “definitive” stories in the way that Steven Spielberg attempted to create the quintessential Holocaust drama with Schindler’s List.  In this regard, it’s difficult to argue with the results.  Part of what sets 12 Years apart as a film is that it goes so much further than even a violent film like Django Unchained did last year-there is no sugar-coating here, and we get a portrait of not just Solomon and his owner Mister Epps (Fassbender, in a performance that seems destined to scoop up dozens of awards in the next few months), but also about the women in their lives.

Yes, it’s worth noting that despite the strong male focus of the commercials and really of the plot, women represent probably the most interesting dynamics of the movie.  In a role that’s getting her raves, though I’m not quite as onboard as the rest of the world, Lupita Nyong’O plays Patsey, the favorite of Mister Epps both in her work and in his bedroom.  Though it’s well known that white men had affairs with their slaves and carried on more publicly than it’s assumed relationships with them, watching the nauseating horror of Patsey’s life causes you almost to stop breathing at some points.  She lives a life where she is worked to the bone, constantly raped by her master, and is subjected to psychological and physical torment by her mistress (American Horror Story’s Sarah Paulsen).  The scene that most people will recall of her plot is the violent whipping she receives at the hands of both Solomon and Epps late in the film, but the violent scene that sticks out to me even more is when Patsey, seemingly out of nowhere, had a heavy glass decanter thrown in her face by Mistress Epps.  The thud and the horrible lack of reaction for Patsey catches the entire audience (this is a movie with a lot of audience reaction) reaching for their chests.

Solomon’s plights follow a mildly more traditional route, and Ejiofor’s performance could be called the same.  He never loses the focus of his freedom, and quickly learns the best way to move ahead is to be in the background of his life as much as possible.  While his torment was excruciating to watch, the benefit of time shows me that I just didn’t connect with his work like I did some of the others.  I think it may be that he gets the least developed character of the bunch, or at least the one who changes in the most expected ways.  Patsey and Mister Epps go in dark and wicked directions during their story arcs, but Solomon has to bare the curse of the hero, particularly one who is drawn from real life-no one likes a saint, and no one can really make a saint interesting-this is what Ejiofor is stuck with, and while the audience rightly pities his situation, I just never found myself in the same connection with him as Patsey, perhaps because I knew his fate before the film began.

The movie succeeds when it gets to the most desperate and unexpected places.  It’s odd to think of this in comparison to McQueen’s recent (and, I have to say it, better) movie Shame, but both films are at their most fascinating when they go on in a way you didn’t think they would.  The scene, for example, where Solomon, trying to escape, happens upon a lynching in the woods, would normally be an escape scene or a pivotal moment to the plot-instead, it’s just something that he passes through.  We feel the fear of what will happen to Solomon, but McQueen gives us something more interesting-a slice of the fear he would experience every day.  It’s a great observation of how there was no escaping the constancy of his melancholy-the film doesn’t let up, and when it does, it doesn’t give the audience relief.

In addition to this scene, there’s perhaps the best moment in the movie, when we get probably the strongest performance of the film, even though it lasts roughly four minutes.  Alfre Woodard was featured with no prominence in the commercials to this film as Mistress Shaw because she is hardly in the film.  However, her scene is so odd, so strange, and so filled with an undercurrent of malice that I have to call it my favorite.  Mistress Shaw is a slave that doesn’t live as one-she has become the de facto wife of one of the overseers, and is trying to encourage Patsey into such a life.  She lives her life away from all of society, but doesn’t suffer the beatings and torment that Patsey and Solomon do in their lives.  Woodard, though, finds the guardedness in this character-she spends most of this scene sizing up Solomon, trying to figure out whether he poses a problem to her or how he can assist her.  Though her life seems ridiculous (sitting around in large southern dresses on a porch getting served tea in the middle of the backwoods), she knows this is the best possible outcome to her existence and isn’t about to relinquish it.  None of the other big-name actors in the movie that show up for the briefest of moments (Paul Dano, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti), are able to maintain a lasting impact on the audience, but Woodard not only does this, I have found myself thinking about the enigma of her character far, far longer than her actual screen-time.

The film is destined to be a major player in the Oscars, and quite frankly may end up the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, but like The Hurt Locker a few years ago, I’m impressed but not in love.  There are moments like the Mistress Shaw scene where I have to step back and truly admire what a consummate filmmaker McQueen has become in such a short filmography, but overall I have to give it my back-handed compliment of “handsome.”  There’s nothing wrong with the film, but in its way of trying to provide both realism and truth to the real-life Solomon, it sacrifices the unexpectedness and the unpredictability that makes a truly great movie so unique.  There’s no weak elements, but calling it the best just doesn’t seem to be the proper reward for when McQueen hits a triple and everyone calls it a home run.

The film is quite long, and I’m guessing anyone who has seen it has an opinion, so it’s time to share yours-what did you think of the film?