I saw Steve McQueen’s “12 Years A Slave” yesterday and was transfixed by this tale of one man’s voyage into and out of slavery and the injustice, dehumanization, and courageous suffering that he goes through. It is a microcosm for the plight of many different men, women and children in the face of powers beyond their control, many of whom weren’t as lucky as Solomon Northup, who was eventually able to be a free man again. We know that Northup will eventually be freed but what really matters is the story of his courage and perseverance against indignity and torment.
The first shot we get of Northup is when he is a slave. The movie does interesting things with the manipulation of time in its use of flashbacks and the fragmentation of a linear storyline. We are thrown into the movie with some brief sequences of Northup’s slave days and it is after this that we are given the story of how he became one. This introduction gives a sense of just how far away from his origins Northup is taken and the depth of the treachery and injustice which he has to endure.
Solomon Northup is a fiddle player and a good one at that. He makes a living with his art. He supports a wife and two children in the Northern United States where black people are free from slavery and can live in harmony with white people. Solomon meets two other artists who propose a job for him. He travels out of town with these two gentlemen and engages in a night of heavy-drinking. We see the two white men carrying Northup to a bed in a hotel room. He wakes up in a prison in chains much to his and the viewer’s dismay and bewilderment. He is suddenly sold into slavery and there is seemingly nothing he can do about it. We witness Northup’s trajectory as he goes from slave-trader to slave-owner, never being sure of his own security or safety.
His first master is played by Benedict Cumberbatch and he is a sympathetic, fair-minded master despite the circumstances. One of the over-seers on Cumberbatch’s plantation is played by Paul Dano and he is less sympathetic and is downright loathsome. At one point, Dano’s character intends to whip Northup but Northup is able to overcome him and ends up beating him and whipping him. At the same time that we are in elation over the empowerment of a slave at the hands of an overseer, we are in agony and suspense over what his punishment for this will be and Northup and the viewer is subjected to a near lynching. Fortunately, Northup survives but only by elevating himself from the ground by the ends of his toes.
This master (Cumberbatch) is left with no choice but to sell Northup to another slave-owner played by Michael Fassbender. He is more evil and mean than anything Northup has experienced in his days as a slave. Fassbender does a masterful job of creating a truly despicable and treacherous individual that is at the same time a full-blooded human being with his own idiosyncrasies and flaws. He is in love with and frequently rapes one of his female slaves, Patsey, all the while maintaining a fractured and volatile relationship with his cruel, cold-blooded wife.
“12 Years A Slave” contains moments of cinematic bliss and joy. Many images are extremely difficult to look at. There is a moment where Patsey is whipped by a forced Northup and Fassbender and the flesh is rendered from her back. There are moments of shear humanity juxtaposed with ultimate cruelty. Brad Pitt has a small part as a Canadian labourer who is instrumental in the eventual release of Northup. The direction is masterful and the cinematography does justice to the themes, plot situations, and characterizations. Chiwetel Ejiofor is amazing in as Northup in a performance that is sure to garner an Oscar nomination.
This is one of the best movies of the year. It is spellbinding and riveting. It gives the viewer a glimpse into a time in human history when the colour of your skin was a deciding factor in your fate and when there was a lack of justice in the world. As the film makes clear at the end, Northup was one of the few individuals who were able to escape the bondage of slavery, an institution that was a festering sore on the skin of our collective history and humanity.
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