JAMES A GEORGE, EYEWEAR'S FILM CRITIC, REVIEWS ONE OF THE MAJOR FILMS OF OUR TIME...
There’s
a lot to be said about artist turned filmmakers – both good and bad – but Steve McQueen is the crème de la crème.
His short art films like Bear, Carib’s Leap and Western Deep, felt like art films seeking a narrative, but
nonetheless enthralling works. This is a feeling he himself reciprocates,
citing his art films as poetry, and his feature lengths as prose. I can’t
confess to having seen all of McQueen’s art, but his new film based on a true
story set during the later years of the American slave trade, feels like his
most successful artistic endeavour and yet his least “artsy”.
McQueen’s three features have all been about physicality
and confinement: Hunger, Shame, and now, 12 Years A Slave. The stoic main characters in the past films have
had to deal with different types of suffering, and the viewer sees this in
great brutal detail, often left to figure out how and why this has, or was
allowed, to happen. What might be most evolved here is the portrayal of the protagonist.
Solomon Northup suffers too, and it too
is visceral suffering, but also his inner thoughts and emotion are clearly shown, without
slapping on some trite voiceover divulging paragraphs of the original text. Solomon
eventually has to concede to hiding his true identity in order to survive, but
still, a human kidnapped into slavery, so much is revealed in the glimmer in the
eyes of actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, or less
abstractly, the drop of a shoulder or clench in his throat. Much to the films
credit, while it is almost consistently a first-person narrative, it is made
clear Solomon’s case of kidnapping into trade was not a singular event: it
happened to hundreds of men and women and children.
There is much talk of the violence in the film, which, yes,
pulls no punches, but remains completely honest. If McQueen wanted to be
sadistic, he would have included the not uncommon use of lemon juice and
similar concoctions added to the whips, to inflict more pain, or far more
horrendous things I do not wish to write. The film even touches on the under-reported
sexual corruption of the slave trade. McQueen’s aesthetic is all in the service
of the truth of Solomon Northup’s experiences, a singular experience of the
slave trade. His visual vocabulary is as usual, astounding, and as in previous
films often demands the attention of the viewer with long unbroken, steady
takes. One might argue McQueen is guilty of his artistic temperament, declaring
with these long takes that, “This is important! Engage! Pay attention, there is
more than meets the eye here! etc.” And while it could be said this worked for
Shame and its multiple layers of possible allegory, its subtle metaphors for modern
society, and thus maybe had to break away from typical film editing – with 12
Years there is no denying the long take has been rarefied, but when used it is
driven by content rather than message. Or maybe it hasn’t been rarefied, and I
was just that involved in the moment I completely forgot I was witnessing hefty
unbroken shots. Either way, this style (or lack of) and realistic
cinematography give a feeling of documentary or even time-travel.
Surprisingly the photography of voluptuous landscapes is
not a problem either (a problem I often have with films about dark matters that
mistakenly indulge in aesthetic beauty simply because it looks cinematic).
Initial thought might have been to take the Luis Bunuel approach to cinematography, to hide the beauty as to
further push forward what the film is trying to say, but the beauty and the
horror are so naturally tangled and juxtaposed with great effect by McQueen and
his marvellous cinematographer Sean
Bobbit (The Place Beyond the Pines,
as well as McQueen’s shorts and features). These heinous acts were taking place
in some of the most stunning parts of America. It might sound simple, but
really think on it and it sickening – a place of such beauty held such
attitudes.
Filmic analysis aside, 12 Years A Slave is a massive
achievement for all involved, and a genuinely very important film. This film
depicts a microcosm of what occurred, something we are now still feeling the (largely
unattended) repercussions of. By the telling the story of Solomon Northup, a
free man with friends and a family and home, a man kidnapped into slavery, he
is a symbol that all slaves should have had freedom – should never have been
slaves or lesser beings – but were never allowed to fully realise their lives.
While particular moments in the film are more dramatically
upsetting than others, the true core of the sadness is as much in the story as
it is in the depiction of the facts of that day and age. That is to say, the
film is a whole, not so much hitting peaks of emotion but rather an entire
segment of a largely ignored truth, which is as miserable to the core as it is
a vital work. A masterwork to be held alongside the finest works of art, as
well as educational textbooks.
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