12 Years a Slave

Call it fate, or – some­what less catchi­ly – an osmot­ic cul­tur­al by-prod­uct of sev­er­al years of lead­er­ship from America’s first black pres­i­dent and the per­va­sive­ly utopic dream of a post-racial soci­ety, but Amer­i­can cin­e­ma is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing its first major sym­po­sium on US slav­ery since the ​’97/’98 one-two punch of Amis­tad and Beloved.

Writ­ten for the screen by an Amer­i­can, John Rid­ley, but direct­ed by Eng­lish­man Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave is the most clin­i­cal and vis­cer­al addi­tion to the recent con­flu­ence of major works to focus on the sub­ject, fol­low­ing Steven Spielberg’s state­ly Lin­coln, Quentin Tarantino’s flip, pop trash­fest Djan­go Unchained (both of which, unlike McQueen’s film, cleave to the tried and test­ed ​‘white sav­iour’ tem­plate) and – to a less­er extent – Lee Daniels’ The But­ler. It is also the first sig­nif­i­cant film about US slav­ery to be helmed by a non-Amer­i­can since Lars von Trier’s caus­tic Manderlay.

In adapt­ing the 1853 mem­oir of a free black New York­er, Solomon Northup (Chi­we­tel Ejio­for), who is hood­winked, kid­napped and sold into slav­ery in the Amer­i­can South, McQueen stops short of the Dane’s aggres­sive­ly Brecht­ian style, but the for­mer visu­al artist’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly rig­or­ous approach (pre­cise, sym­met­ri­cal fram­ing; shots held for an unset­tling length of time) is present and cor­rect. Through McQueen’s unspar­ing lens, slav­ery is viewed as an atroc­i­ty exhi­bi­tion as stark and oth­er­world­ly as any­thing in the work of JG Bal­lard, down to the unset­tling cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance between the beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tured, ver­dant land­scapes and the heinous crimes being per­pe­trat­ed on them.

Con­sid­er the hor­ri­fy­ing scene which finds Northup alone and splut­ter­ing in a field with a noose tied around his neck while peo­ple pot­ter in the back­ground as if noth­ing unto­ward is hap­pen­ing. Thanks to the com­bi­na­tion of McQueen’s cal­cu­lat­ed­ly banal dis­tance and the lush­ness of the area, it is Northup the vic­tim who is made to look the aber­ra­tion in this top­sy-turvy tableau.

12 Years a Slave is a tem­plate McQueen film not only from an aes­thet­ic stand­point, but a the­mat­ic one: as in Hunger and Shame, the focus rests upon a male fig­ure trapped in a socio/​physio/​psychological prison with lit­tle chance of escape on their own terms. This, para­dox­i­cal­ly, is the film’s biggest strength and weak­ness. Northup is a bril­liant, befud­dled, social­ly-demot­ed con­duit for view­ers hith­er­to unaware of the true hor­rors of slav­ery, but the focus on his sto­ry seems to dis­tract McQueen from paint­ing the oth­er char­ac­ters in as much depth — or, in the slaves’ case, with any agency.

Lupi­ta Nyong’o (an incred­i­ble dis­cov­ery) is bril­liant and har­row­ing as the trag­ic Pat­sey, but per­mit­ted only to suf­fer. Else­where, the insti­tu­tion­al intri­ca­cies of the slav­ery-era South are paint­ed in fair­ly broad, bina­ry strokes, from Bene­dict Cumberbatch’s out­ward­ly benev­o­lent but spine­less Mr Ford, to Michael Fassbender’s the­atri­cal­ly demon­ic slavedriv­er Edwin Epps.

Luck­i­ly, Ejio­for responds bril­liant­ly to the demands of a tricky role. The con­straints of his character’s cir­cum­stances – he is re-named Platt, and can’t even con­fess to being edu­cat­ed for fear of reprisals – pre­clude him from declam­a­to­ry, con­ven­tion­al­ly actor­ly moments. Con­se­quent­ly, his face becomes the emo­tion­al cen­tre of the film; his eyes are sul­phuric orbs con­vey­ing increas­ing­ly infer­nal reserves of pain.

The film’s great­est moment arrives when Northup, hav­ing suf­fered a set­back in his attempts to escape, final­ly joins in with the singing of a negro spir­i­tu­al. Here, he is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly gain­ing strength from col­lec­tiv­i­ty in place of a long-held indi­vid­u­al­ism and, under extreme duress, toss­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal com­fort of his hith­er­to priv­i­leged social sta­tus into the fire. It’s a tran­scen­dent moment of emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty, and, until Ejio­for starts to sing, all we’ve got to go on is that face.

The extremes to which the film goes has proven a stick­ing point in some quar­ters. Its fiercest US crit­ic, Armond White, has equat­ed McQueen’s inten­tion to elic­it vis­cer­al view­er reac­tions with the worst excess­es of the tor­ture porn sub­genre, and fur­ther tak­en it to task for ​“depict­ing slav­ery as a hor­ror­show”. One may jus­ti­fi­ably won­der how else slav­ery should be rep­re­sent­ed, but White, in mak­ing the gener­ic com­par­i­son, has a point. 12 Years a Slave is indeed a hor­ror film, in that it immers­es us – with lit­tle reprieve – into a set of unpalat­able social con­di­tions that, with just a few minor tweaks, could almost be alle­gor­i­cal sci­ence fic­tion; it’s that fucked-up.

Yet to plunge us in the cor­po­re­al real­i­ties of slav­ery is pre­cise­ly McQueen’s inten­tion, and it’s debat­able that an Amer­i­can film­mak­er would be so explic­it. More­over, in a con­tem­po­rary cli­mate where black bod­ies are still dis­cussed in depress­ing­ly eval­u­a­tive terms (see the Trayvon Mar­tin case, or Fruit­vale Sta­tion, the film about the police killing of black Cali teen Oscar Grant), it’s not as if 12 Years a Slave is a fusty muse­um piece; rather, it’s an essen­tial addi­tion to an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion about the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black bod­ies in the media.