Steve McQueen has only directed two features to date, 2008’s troubling look at a hunger strike in an early 80s North Ireland prison, Hunger, and 2011’s terrifying portrayal of modern sex addiction, Shame, but both were so dang good that the release of his third is already a huge event. Especially seeing as said third feature, 12 Years a Slave, tells a true tale that’s just about the most harrowing thing that’s ever happened in human history, and it features an ensemble cast so large and so talented that it may be one of the best ever assembled for anything. Does that sounds like too much hype? Too bad. This movie is kind of a big deal.
The story being told is that of a New York man named Solomon Northup (Chiwotel Ejiofor), who had a pretty sweet life going for him that included a home, a wife, and two young children, but who in 1841 had his entire world thrown into upheaval when a job opportunity turned out to be a ruse that led to him being kidnapped in the night and sold into slavery. You see, Northup was a black man, and in 1800s America that came with a whole host of hardships, especially in the southern part of the country where he was shipped under the cover of night and sold to the owner of a plantation to work out the rest of his days in a field. 12 Years a Slave adapts Northup’s memoirs of the same name, which he wrote later in his life, after his liberation from slavery and during the period where he worked as an abolitionist.
When you’re talking about a Steve McQueen movie, the first thing you generally have to mention is the crafting, because he’s a director who comes from a background of creating with various different forms of the visual arts, and he uses every skill at his disposal to make his movies unique visual experiences that don’t look much like the other ones you usually see. Most directors photograph their movies, McQueen seems to situate photography into the form of a film. His touch is evident from the very first frame of 12 Years a Slave, which is a POV shot that travels through a fully grown sugar cane field ready for harvest, and that pushes the lush leaves out of the frame as it moves forward. Not only is the shot an interesting perspective on a beautiful landscape and a gorgeous example of inventive cinematography, it’s also a technique that instantly disorients you and immerses you in another world. By the time the camera comes upon our protagonist we’re fully in another place, ready to accept the reality that we’ve traveled into the past.
The gorgeous scenery doesn’t end there either. All of McQueen’s movies have looked beautiful to date, but this is probably the first time he’s had such overwhelmingly beautiful things to point his camera at. The location scouting done for this film was second to none. The Southern plantations that most of the action takes place on are so lush, so gorgeous, that often it feels like you’re watching one of those old Disney cartoons that took place in the South rather than something that’s taking place in reality as we know it. The willow trees hanging overhead and the overflowing fields that go on for eternity wrap you up like a warm blanket, and you really get the sense that this is a universe you wouldn’t mind spending the rest of your life in—if the things going on there weren’t so traumatizing. In addition to being beautiful, the locations this film utilizes also give off the impression of being haunted with misery, and for some reason that mixture of beauty and pain makes the crimes being committed on screen even more horrific. It’s like when the lady of the plantation (Sarah Paulson) reassuringly coos to a new slave who has just been separated from her children at the auction block, “Something to eat and some rest and your children will soon be forgotten.” Cruelty masked as kindness burrows under your skin so much deeper than cruelty that’s outright.
Shame was notable because it took the negative repercussions of living with sex addiction and it elevated them to the level of horror. Being thrust into the middle of the life of a man who compulsively sought out sexual stimulation felt just as horrific as being put in the world of a serial killer when presented by McQueen, and that same elevation of emotion happens here when you look at the reality of slavery through his eyes as well. Not that human trafficking needs any elevation to be horrific, but when the Northup character wakes up from a night of celebration to find himself chained to a wall in a dirty basement, you’re made to feel the predicament so much more than you would have been in most other movies. It’s in the way McQueen’s camera lingers over Ejiofor’s face as he comes to accept his new reality, it’s in the way he refuses to give us a moments rest by cutting away to another perspective.
At this point in his career McQueen is probably best known for his long takes. Both of his previous films have included prominent ones, and both have used the effect of resting the camera on a subject for a lengthy period of time without cutting away to incredible, tension-heightening, subtext-creating effect. If McQueen’s camera stops moving, pay attention, because what he’s showing you is guaranteed to be important. 12 Years a Slave continues this trend and includes what might be the most effective Steve McQueen long take to date. Without giving much away, it involves Northup being stuck in a dangerous, painful, life threatening situation, and while the focus is immediately on Ejiofor as he struggles for survival, the real important part of the frame is what’s going on in the background. Almost immediately after a violent confrontation the other slaves go right back to their business, clearly paying no mind and no attention to the fact that one of their own is likely dying in front of them. That’s how desensitized to inhumanity they’ve become.
We mentioned the talented ensemble of actors bringing these characters to life earlier, and given the pedigree that each of the main players brings to the table, it’s no surprise that the performances here are incredible. Ejiofor is just perfect for the main role. He brings such a refinement to the Northup character that it puts an exclamation point on how corrupt everyone involved in his transition into slave life was, what a blind eye they were constantly willing to turn as long as it helped their pocketbooks. Northup clearly is no uneducated slave, and watching all of the new masters that lord over him ignore this fact feels like watching the biggest lie ever told in history being perpetrated right in front of you. Plus, pain just travels across Ejiofor’s face so quickly and so clearly that it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to better make us understand the effects of the abuse he endures.
As far as the supporting cast goes, the main player who demands attention is probably McQueen regular Michael Fassbender, who plays the corrupt and insecure slaver who owns the plantation where Northup works for much of his ordeal. The character is a terrifying, evil, desperate man, and it’s the conviction in Fassbender’s eyes and the way he fully throws himself into the role that really sells you on the reality of the guy. Not only is Fassbender unashamedly willing to be portrayed as being completely evil here, he’s also unashamedly willing to appear as a complete fool, and that bit of vulnerability ads an authenticity to the character that somehow makes him even more chilling than he would have been were he just an evil caricature.
In addition to Fassbender, Paul Dano also shows up in a small role as a field boss, and it might be the most perfect-for-Paul-Dano role he’s ever played. Really, it’s kind of a take on the doomed character he played in There Will Be Blood, or especially the loud-mouthed character he played in Cowboys and Aliens. It’s his job here to be the most blustery, obnoxious, irritating man on the planet, while in a position of control, and then to degenerate into the position of a sniveling worm as soon as he’s directly confronted. There is no one in the world who can play punchable quite like Dano, except for possibly Nic Cage. Paul Giamatti also impresses while briefly showing up in the role of the slave trader who puts Northup to market. The character is so pompous and without pity, and he might get the line of the film when he responds to a woman begging to not be separated from her kids by saying, “My sentimentality extends the length of a coin.” Giamatti, of course, nails the delivery. This guy is one of the best onscreen sleazes we have.
The only casting choice that doesn’t work is when Brad Pitt randomly shows up playing a character essential to the development of the plot when we’re already most of the way through the movie. He’s just too much of a movie star, too iconically Brad Pitt for his sudden presence to not pull you out of the film after you’ve been so thoroughly immersed for so long. The effect is heightened because his character feels like something of a plot contrivance as well, even though he seems to be a real figure from Northup’s life. Sometimes reality just doesn’t make for good storytelling, and the way this character gets suddenly introduced and has his motivations immediately established—and the way he’s so distractingly Brad Pitt—is probably the one big misstep of the movie.
The other complaint I came away with is that there were some pacing problems that began to pop up as the film approached the pivotal moment where Pitt shows up and changes everything. Somewhere there in the second or third act, which don’t get clearly defined, the movie starts to feel a bit meandering and long. The problem is that you never get a clear sense of how close you are to its end point. Even if you haven’t heard Northup’s whole story already, you still know that his predicament doesn’t last forever due to the title 12 Years a Slave. Yet you still never really get a clear idea of how much time has passed as you watch the story unfold. Has Northup been in these fields for months? Years? It isn’t clear. Each scene feels more like a series of vignettes than they do building blocks that are clearly building up toward an inevitable conclusion. Some sort of small subplot to keep the narrative momentum moving forward, even just a tiny one, would have went a long way.
That said, each of those individual vignettes that make up the story are so dang effective that they hit you like bombs. People in my audience were openly weeping throughout, they were physically turning away from the screen during the most harrowing moments. One particular scene that involved a young woman being whipped was so uncomfortable to sit through that it started to make me feel physically ill. It gets so bad that you start to want to deny that the life of a slave could really have been this bad. I mean, the day to day reality had to be difficult, sure, but wouldn’t it have to be much more mundane and routine than the series of lowlights we’re presented with here? Then it sinks in that your pulling away from the acts committed in the film is merely a manifestation of your desire to deny that anything like legal human slavery could have ever really happened in the first place. There is clearly no more evil an act than allowing one person to be the property of another, subject to each and every one of their terrible whims, and there’s no more damning indictment of humanity than the fact that we once let this take place, and that under the right circumstances we could let it happen again.
At best, 12 Years a Slave will work as a visceral reminder of the horrors of slavery that makes sure nothing remotely so wrong will happen again in this society anytime soon. At the very least, it works as a mediation on the arbitrary nature of law. With just one change of policy an entire race of people can systematically have their lives stolen away from them. On who’s authority? With all of the post-watch emotions it stirs up and the days-after contemplations it inspires, there’s probably not much of an argument to be made against the fact that 12 Years a Slave is one of the very best films that has been released so far this year.
