Movie: 12 Years a Slave
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o
Rating: ****
There’s brutality, lots and lots of it, in Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave”, and there’s also sympathy, love, hate and the will to survive. There’s a line in the film that goes – ‘survival is not about certain death, it’s about keeping your head down’. The will to survive kept Solomon Northup aka Platt, a black free man who was abducted and sold into slavery, alive. This film, which enamored me from head to toe, from moment to moment, shows us not just slavery like never seen before but questions our faith in humanity.
An adept at playing the violin, married and happily living the life of a free man, is Marcus Northup, who gets allured by a job offer in Washington and gets himself abducted and ends up as a slave. From one slaver to another, Marcus with the slave name Platt earns the reputation of being an exceptionally good nigger. What happens to him as a slave? This forms the rest of the story.
Based on a true story of Solomon Northup, the film is adapted from his slave diary of the same name. If you have followed director Steve McQueen’s work that features films such as “Hunger” and “Shame”, you realize that he uses recurring topics such as depression, hatred, loneliness and struggle to make his story as realistic as possible. “12 Years a Slave” too uses these themes to present an unflinching look at human brutality and racial discrimination.
If this story was as brutal and gut-wrenching as portrayed, then i wonder why wasn’t it told to the world earlier? Moreover, this story, coming from a Black man who is English, makes you even more curious as we come away from the film.
Giving us a peek of slavery from close quarters, McQueen makes you feel hurt that someone did such things, but never angry. Even though his work his uncompromising, it still gets you hooked from the get go. His other films too have done that and that’s what makes him one of the finest filmmakers of modern times.
The brutality in the film is not easy to digest, especially scenes where the slaves are whipped. It’s gruesome, shocking and very disturbing for an unprepared viewer, who is most likely to cringe in his seat. That said, you can’t shy away from it as it becomes an integral part of the narrative in depicting the racial abuse of the Black people. The scene where Solomon is made to admit he is a slave and not a free man stands out and draws your attention to the story.
A story about race and human freedom, the film is backed by an able cast featuring Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano and Paul Giamatti in important roles that each one of them pulled off effortlessly. My personal favorite is the one played by Giamatti, who while trading slaves mouths a very interesting line that goes – “Sentimentality of a White man extends the length of a coin”.
Fassbender, who has teamed up with McQueen for the third time, plays a role so different from the ones he has essayed in the past. He plays a sadistic a cotton planter who likes to call his slaves as his property and treats them the same way anyone would treat his or her own property. He evolves in this character portraying expressions ranging from brutality to weakness with utmost dedication and ease.
Chiwetel Ejiofor wears the slave tag like a medallion. He doesn’t deserve adulation but sincere respect for the role he played in the film. You root for the hero within the slave he becomes in the film. He is strongly backed by equally good performances by Cumberbatch, Dano and Lupita Nyong’o.
McQueen has mastered his craft of handling a subject as sensitive and controversial as slavery. He reminds us that slavery may be written off, but continues to haunt us in different forms across the globe. Do we still believe in humanity even after witnessing what the White people did with the Blacks? He leaves you with this question and the answer to it lies deep within us.
