Essentials: 12 Years a Slave

Year: 2013 (USA)
Genre: Drama/Biography
Directed: Steve McQueen
Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Paul Dano, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti, Brad Pitt, Dwight Henry, Bryan Batt
Production: Regency Enterprises


I'm taking a slight diversion from my Top 100 countdown to champion a recent film I was blessed to see only a few short days ago. With my general over-consumption of films and increasingly snobbish response to most of today's ballyhoo Hollywood hokum, It's become nearly impossible to truly love a new film. Plus, lets face it, every endearing classic needs to go through the test of time before it can be considered truly essential cinema. Forrest Gump (1994) won the Oscar the year it was released yet ask any movie-geek and they'd probably prefer Pulp Fiction (1994) or Shawshank Redemption (1994) who were both nominated for the same award.

The naked truth can be hard to watch

I can say with reasonable confidence that 12 Years a Slave (2013) will stand the test of time and become one of the defining features of this decade. It is a film that puts a face and emotional resonance on the issue of slavery quite unlike any dedicated to celluloid before. It's got solid performances all-around and while award season hasn't quite hit high gear this year, I would put money on 12 Years a Slave winning big.

But I digress; 12 Years a Slave is based on the life of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) a learned black freeman living in Saratoga Springs, New York circa 1841. He lives comfortably with two children and his wife and makes a living playing the violin. Introduced to a duo of conniving showmen, Solomon wakes up after a drunken bender in a D.C. boarding house and is told he is to be sold at slave auction. He is then transported by steamboat to New Orleans where a fellow traveler gives him life-saving advice; "If they find out you can read, you'll be one dead n---." Once sold at auction, Solomon spends the next 12 years working for two separate masters, one benevolent and kind (for a slave-owner anyway), the other covetous and cruel.


I saw Roots...so we cool now?

I could go on forever simply describing Solomon's galling journey experiencing first-hand one of America's biggest crimes against humanity. It's one thing to read about slavery through textbooks or see it through Roots (1977) reruns; It's another thing to feel almost like you have lived through it. You may not feel the lashes of the whips but you can almost smell the sweat escaping from Solomon's pores, taste the salty tears of every misfortune and feel you heart beating in your throat at every tense moment.

You can accredit this exchange of empathy to the brilliant acting of Chiwetel Ejiofor, an actor who up until now was known to me as the guy from the underrated Talk to Me (2007). You may know him as the baddy from Serenity (2005) but after this movie, you may well know him as Academy Award winner Chiwetel Ejiofor, taking his place among the unfortunately small group of black actors who have taken home top prize.

But lest you think 12 Years a Slave is a one man show, Michael Fassbender plays a sadistic slave-owner by the name of Edwin Epps with aplomb. I truly hated his character not because for his barbarism but for his human frailty. He takes out his lack of fortitude on his slaves all the while convincing the audience that such a person likely existed and isn't a caricature or composite of ignorant, immoral Southern plantation owners of the day. Also to look for is Lupita Nyong'o and

Absolute tool

Sarah Paulson, who play Epps's favorite slave and his jealous wife respectively.

What is most impressive and most disheartening about the whole sordid tale is how impossibly ordinary the events of the story are. Director Steve McQueen tries hard to create a sense of normalcy through extended pauses on the shocking treatment of slaves juxtaposed with everyday happenings in the background. There is one scene where Solomon is almost lynched for talking back to a plantation supervisor. As Solomon is left alone with a noose around his neck, black children play in the background undisturbed by Solomon precariously tiptoeing on the ground to prevent choking. People are bought, sold, beaten, lynched and raped all with a perverted sense of the everyday.

12 Years a Slave to me not only speaks volumes about the world that once was, before trading in human flesh was abolished, it speaks to the condition of the world today. What things do we consider everyday, and even mundane that those in generations to come will judge us for? Will there ever be another time slavery will become common place? I like to think not for as the great Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." I don't think I'm giving much away by saying Solomon never got to see that justice in his lifetime. Many including myself contend we will not see true justice in respect to slavery for a good long time. Yet we can all agree that the hard lessons learned from slavery should never be forgotten. Thank goodness we have Steve McQueen and 12 Years a Slave to make sure we won't.

You know, that and history class

Final Grade: A