12 Years a Slave ***** (2013, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Lupita Nyong’o, Brad Pitt, Sarah Paulson) – Movie Review

In a year split between this, Gravity and Dallas Buyers Club, 12 Years a Slave ended up with just three 2014 Oscars, including Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong’o. There were six other nominations.

London-born Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, a cultured free black man from upstate New York, who is abducted and sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War United States. He’s about to spend the next 12 years confronting and trying to survive appalling evil. But a couple of unexpected kindnesses – not many in 12 years, you’d say – save his life and set him free again. Solomon lives to tell this appalling tale in his book that forms the basis of London-born director Steve McQueen’s third film (after Hunger and Shame).

At first he is under the rule of his new owner, a fairly kindly Christian, Ford (the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch), who gifts him a violin. But Solomon fights back against the evil, violent, racist young foreman Tibeats (Paul Dano) and beats him up.

Ford saves his life, but because of his refusal to take slavery lying down and therefore his ‘bad reputation’, Ford can find only one slave owner to take him on, the malevolent and cruel Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) and his equally malevolent and cruel wife (Sarah Paulson), who is jealous of her husband’s lust for a female slave, Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), whom he’s raped.

Solomon battles not only to stay alive, but also to retain his dignity and even plot his own release. He manages to write a letter explaining his situation and entrusts it to a white man who says he’ll help him, only to be betrayed. He narrowly escapes with his life by lying convincingly to Epps. But then, in the twelfth year of his slavery, a white Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) turns up to work on the Epps estate and agrees to help. Given the title, there’s no mystery here. It’s obvious that Solomon’s chance meeting with Bass will prove his salvation. We know he has to survive to write the book the film is based on.

There’s no doubt that this movie is high up there in the hardest-to-watch category of films like Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List or Empire of the Sun, Paul Greengrass’s United 93 and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. And there’s no doubt too that this is incredibly difficult to sit through. A couple of times I shut my eyes and put my hand over my face. I really didn’t want to watch hangings, rape and floggings. I don’t want them in my head. The film isn’t especially violent but it lingers nastily around an air of violence for necessary impact. It has to.

This is an incredibly powerful, honest and true film from director Steve McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley that will have some audiences weeping and many clapping at the end as they did at the London Film Festival screening. It is beautifully made and acted, in a quite formal way, reminding me of Spielberg’s work. McQueen focuses in tight on the people involved, producing an intense atmosphere of claustrophobia and horror.

The film’s always best when the story’s seen from Solomon’s restricted point of view. When it strays a couple of times to give us distance shots of towns, it doesn’t look quite right, and it jars. You’re watching a film for a moment. The rest of the film feels like you’re in there serving 12 years with Solomon. That is hard to take. You’re thrilled when he gets free. You know you’re free too.

Ejiofor gives an accomplished, flawless performance. It’s low key, with no hysterics, and no obvious dramatics. He’s the perfect embodiment of a noble kind of man patiently suffering, hoping against hope there’ll be a final salvation. In that sense, he represents the human spirit, of eternal optimism. The end credits remind us that Solomon was one of the rare survivors of this situation. He’s like the Wladyslaw Szpilman character in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. His survival is against any and all odds. It offers hope to us all.

Fassbender is amazing in his portrait of evil. In an extraordinarily intense and subtle piece of acting, he makes the vile and fearsome Epps credible and understandable. He’s not just a stock monster or villain. That makes him even more chilling. He’s like the Amon Goeth character in Schindler’s List.

Paulson is equally astonishing as his abusive, conniving wife. She’s at least as scary as he is. Nyong’o and Dano (not playing a victim for a change) also stand out in the especially fine cast, commendably comprising actors who aren’t just the usual Hollywood suspects. Producer Pitt’s performance is, unfortunately, the weakest. His slightly off-key star cameo doesn’t sit easily in the film.

Technically the film is highly accomplished, with veteran Hans Zimmer’s striking score and the exquisite camerawork of veteran cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (who also worked on Hunger and Shame), both essential to the armoury of director McQueen. Oscars are probable. McQueen, Bobbitt and Zimmer certainly deserve them. I could see it winning Best Film quite easily (and so it did on the night of March 2 2014) and the actors could be honoured (only Lupita Nyong’o, as it turned out). It all depends on the competition.

So, while impossibly hard to watch, this is an incredibly moving, deeply heartfelt, sky-high raiser of the spirits, which is what makes it worthwhile. McQueen has brought a little-known book of memoirs from years ago and a true, forgotten story into the present currency. And that’s important too.

Slavery is like the Holocaust, its appalling, disgusting reality has to be permanently recalled. It still exists in some parts of the world today, and I would urge McQueen to tackle that pressing, under-explored subject for his next film. The film is part is about man’s inhumanity to man and that’s a topic that can keep McQueen in work for ever.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Movie Review

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