Roll, Jordan, Roll

Rating: 9/10 (8 October 2014)

It's the curse of almost any American movie about race relations to instantly become a political football. I usually ignore the outrage, because in general, these are message movies exploiting furor to distract from dearth of artistry—but 12 Years a Slave is a startling exception.
Indeed, my overall impression was one of restraint, with many long shots, silent but for the sounds of crickets.
And it's a true story.
Solomon Northup was a free man, an immensely identifiable middle-class husband and father, played in this film by empathetic, self-possessed Chiwetel Ejiofor.
In 1841, Solomon is persuaded by a pair of circus-men to travel to Washington D.C., there displaying his talents on the violin. While there, he is kidnapped by the "Reverse Underground Railroad," and shipped to Mississippi, where he is sold as a slave, twice, working on two plantations. The first of these is owned by an indecisive Baptist preacher, Henry Ford, and the second by a sadistic psychopath, Edwin Epps.
Like most of us, Solomon takes freedom for granted. He presents his name and status like a badge of freedom, and expects to be heard, because he has lived in a free society all his life. An early beating beneath the streets of D.C. is the first of many indignities which begin to strip away this innocence. He has no rights. He has no freedom of speech, freedom to learn, freedom to travel.
Seldom have I seen a better representation of what it really means to be a slave. It's far beyond the pettiness of snubs about skin-color, or "offensive" football team names. Coming into this state of being so swiftly, and from a position of such prosperity, is traumatizing. The closest modern-day equivalent is when an American, about the freest of all citizens on this earth, takes a wrong turn and ends up in North Korea. "Oh, sorry, I'll just turn around, shall I?"
Solomon does not identify as a black man, but as a free man. The distinction is important. At the deepest level, it's made clear that this oppression is not a result of shallow prejudices (or evil confined to any one race), but of power gone mad, and God's law discarded in a struggle for survival. Late in the film, an abolitionist makes this startlingly clear, contrasting a larger vision of scripture with the twisted fragments used by slavers to justify their actions.
When men are not seen as souls, they become property. This desecration of person-hood has taken place all over the world, and has led to holocausts and genocide in many nations. What is specific to this story is its ability to tap into our cultural and physical history, taking advantage of sumptuous Mississippi locations captured in gorgeous cinematography, and glorious African music (contrasting with Hans Zimmer's Inception-warmed- over score). To my delight, the visuals were a highlight of the film.
It isn't a documentary on the entirety of slavery, nor does it pretend to be—it is almost completely a first-person experience. To that effect, it sometimes glosses history to provide mood. A slave is stabbed, when he actually died of smallpox. Henry Ford is far more ambiguous as a character than the decent, though ideologically confused, preacher that Northup painted. Both of these things go towards intensifying the all-encompassing feeling of an unfair system. Even good men like Ford are crushed in the gears of the massive machine of survival, forced to horrific actions. Human action or vengeance is utterly, utterly futile in the face of such institutionalized cruelty.
And grace goes the other way. While never going so far as sympathy, we are shown that slavery has a terrible effect on oppressors, just as it has on oppressed: "no man of conscious can take the lash to another human day in, and day out without shredding at his own self." It's a rare film that lets me see myself in both the slave and master.
It does have its flaws, many of which I have mentioned. Once again, it is a very brutal film, and not for the faint of heart. Lupita Nyong'o (who I, somehow, have gotten all the way through this post and not mentioned) is phenomenal. It is an Important Film, but not in the Boring Info-Dump sense, but in the sense that I am glad I have seen it, because it has permanently affected how I view slavery. I have never seen a movie that makes me value freedom this much, or feel despair at this level.
Full review posted here: http://www.longview95.blogspot.com/2014/06/12-years-slave-movie- review.html