No, Not That Steve McQueen

Rating: 9/10 (21 February 2014)

No, not that Steve McQueen.
During the first two thirds of the nineteenth century, slavery was the key issue in American politics. It poisoned relationships between the states and eventually led to civil war. Its legacy has seriously affected, and continues to affect, relationships between black and white and between North and South. And yet the cinema has never paid much attention to the subject; films about the antebellum Deep South and its "peculiar institution" have been few and far between, Spielberg's "Amistad" being one of the few exceptions. Perhaps the subject is even today just too controversial for Hollywood's liking.
"12 Years a Slave" does something to redress the balance, although it is notable that it was made by a British director (of Jamaican ancestry) and that there are only two major American stars, Brad Pitt and Paul Dano, both in supporting roles. The four major roles are played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (British, of Nigerian ancestry), Michael Fassbender (Irish, of German ancestry), Benedict Cumberbatch (British, of white Barbadian ancestry) and Lupita Nyong'o (Kenyan). It is based upon the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York State who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery. He was forced to work on plantations in Louisiana for twelve years before his release.
Northup's first master, William Ford, is a relatively humane and liberal man. To modern eyes those adjectives look strange and inappropriate; to us the very act of enslaving someone is about as illiberal and inhumane as one can get. Yet the contrast is brought out when Ford is forced by circumstances to sell Northup, now renamed "Platt", to another plantation owner, Edwin Epps. Epps is a savage brute who rapes his female slaves and mercilessly beats any slave, male or female, who fails to pick their daily quota of 200 pounds of cotton or who incurs his displeasure in any other way. Northern abolitionists, who were often devout Christians, tended to assume that Southern slave-owners must all be godless unbelievers, but this was often not the case. Epps attempts to justify his cruelty by references to the Bible, and even preaches his own interpretation of the Scriptures to his slaves in the belief that this will help reconcile them to their lot.
The film is unsparing in its depiction of the brutality of the slave system, more so than previous films on the subject. One reviewer stated that " 'Roots' is 'The Care Bears Movie' in comparison to this.". One particularly harrowing scene comes when Epps forces Northup to whip a female slave who has displeased him and then, when Northup shows obvious reluctance, completes the task himself with savage relish. The film also shows how many Southerners who did not own slaves themselves nevertheless accepted or even actively supported the system; the one person who is prepared to condemn slavery is an outsider, not even a Northerner but a Canadian, and even he is at first cautious about taking any steps to assist Northup.
Ejiofor greatly impressed me when I first saw him in "Dirty Pretty Things" about twelve years ago, and gives another very impressive performance here, endowing Northup with great dignity and an inner strength which enables him to survive unbowed blows of fate which would have crushed most men. The other outstanding contributions come from Fassbender as Epps, one of the most frightening villains since Goeth in "Schindler's List" and Nyong'o as the female slave Patsey.
Slavery was of course an institution which destroyed the lives of millions of people over a period of more than two centuries. McQueen's achievement is that he is able to use the life of one individual to expose the enormity of this continuing crime against humanity, just as "The Diary of Anne Frank" used a single individual to examine the enormity of the Holocaust, or "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" did the same for the Soviet gulags. The film has been nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Steve McQueen has a good chance of winning the Oscar which always eluded his illustrious namesake. 9/10