A humiliation hard to imagine

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 2013)

When Solomon Northup wakes up on a floor and realizes that he has been kidnapped, we hear the familiar sound of chains before we see what happened. He is chained to the hands and feet. He's only wearing a pair of pants and a shirt. He is black.
"12 years a slave" is based on a peculiar autobiography of the same name that was published in 1853. Barely ten years before Lincoln proclaimed the abolition of slavery , and the book was also used as propaganda by the abolitionists that Northup, a black man born in freedom, he himself joined .
Steve McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley ("Three Kings") had been able to take what happened afterwards, when Northup helped slaves escape. But they stick to the literary boundaries and thus makes the film into what the book is, one man 's testimony about something that affected many.
Steve McQueen has said he thought he understood what slavery was before he read the biography. But the film, just like the book, lays bare the humiliation that is difficult to imagine. The key is that we see the system through someone we can identify with, someone not indoctrinated from birth but suddenly suffer from insanity with full force.
In the feature film debut "Hunger" (2008), about the IRA-martyr Bobby Sands, and in "Shame", about a sex addict, Steve McQueen meditated on the body burden and means of expression. And the slavery bizarre premise, that a person's body may be someone else's property, invites rich storytelling .
When Northup wakes up after being drugged and betrayed by two superficial acquaintances, he has, in the 1840s U.S. not have a chance. He is a black man without papers, without the expensive clothes we've seen him in before. "You are a fugitive - slave - from Georgia!" Is the slave trader screaming and beat into words as a spell with a paddle. The body becomes a prison. He gets undressed, and dressed as a slave. He loses his real name.
At the slave auction where Solomon eventually ends. It not people the slave traders show up, but the muscles, flesh and limbs with different merits. The violence, carried out with whips, ropes and kind, keeps coming back. But we must also see what happens afterwards: the pain, the wounds bathed and the crippling shame of those who are powerless beside .
The white people that Solomon Northup meets on his odyssey in hell makes you think of the three monkeys who do not hear, do not see and do not say anything, locked in a system they are unable to question : Ford ( Benedict Cumberbatch ), the slave owner with a bleeding conscience, during whale Tibeats (Paul Dano ) the epitome of a weak talented racist, and so Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender ), a brutal sadist who are inclined towards Luke. But even if Northrup conceal their identity as highly skilled in order to avoid provoking more violence, he disturbs their circles .
McQueen and Sean Bobbitt, photographer in all brit's films, working with contrasts. Intrusive images in natural light set against the tableau - like compositions close to traditional painting or set-ups in front of a photographer. A desperate sexual encounter in the slave barracks set against images of Solomon and his wife in a bed that appears to be supernaturally clean in comparison. Picturesque images of mansions embedded in greenery, sunlight and chirping of birds set against the abuse that goes on there.
The film's greatest moment is the scene where Northup being hanged in a tree after assaulting a guard. He escapes lynching, but must remain a full day as punishment, on the toe, to avoid being suffocated by the rigged noose. In almost three minutes, we hear only his wheezing, and it is a long time in a movie. Meanwhile the other slaves manages their chores in the background. Children noise on a distance. A foreman wandering around. One of the slaves creeping quickly up with water for Solomon. The lady of the house watching from her balcony. The sun has time to lose.
Chiwetel Ejiofor does a heroic deed when he portrays Northups struggle to stay alive. It is on his shoulders the film rests, even if the whole cast is amazing, especially Lupita Nyong'o and Michael Fassbender. The only objection, which probably mostly about the ingrained expectation, is that it adds a damper on the strong emotions in the final scene, which feels static. It is also an illustration of a convulsively restored dignity.