Best film about slavery? - "Sansho the Bailiff" still in the lead!

Rating: 7/10 (21 April 2014)

I get the feeling that Steve McQueen is still more of a visual artist than a storyteller, so that, for all the talent and craftsmanship on display, "Twelve Years" seems surprisingly detached and uninvolving. In the only scene that did connect for me, Solomon joins in, with increasing fervor, as his fellow slaves sing "Roll, Jordan, Roll" beside the grave of an old man who collapsed in the cottonfields, and here, I think, the effect may be the opposite of what McQueen intended as Solomon's steely stoicism gives way to something like Christian resignation. A low-key episode in which Solomon's logistic skills as a lumberman and raftsman, acquired as a free man in the North, excite the murderous envy of a white plantation carpenter seemed more effective than the expected lashings and lynchings and sexual exploitation.
As with "Argo," another Oscar winner with "true story" origins, I was surprised by the way the script makes room for routine invented scenes (like the one in which a defiant Michael K. Williams is summarily killed off on board the steamship) while overlooking what seems like sure-fire plot material (the real Solomon was able to get a letter to his family from New Orleans, so they knew he'd been kidnapped but had no idea where he was). Later there's a scene in which Solomon takes a few steps off the path to the general store and immediately runs into the dreaded "paterollers" about to lynch two suspected runaways...Seems a bit coincidental; anyone know if that was in the book as well? Great performances, great cinematography, but in the end McQueen's chilly filmmaking style and John Ridley's uneven screenplay really blunt the impact of this powerful material.