12 Years a Slave

Any film with this subject matter will be moving. It's essentially built-in, but that does not mean there is any laziness to the artistic process, or that the emotional hits are cheap and manipulative. It would be a hard story to mess up enough to render powerless, true, and the complex sociopolitical issues that are raised by reminders of slavery are built-in, but this does not belittle the achievements of this film, which is beautiful and terrible above and beyond its source. It is a superbly well-made film on the technical level, direct without being obvious and equal parts grit and artistry, and is sure to make Steve McQueen a truly big-name director henceforth, perhaps even to the point where he will begin to be the first Steve McQueen that cinemagoers think of when his name is spoken. 

I usually have pithy things to say at the end of any film, but I didn't want to say them at the end of this, because it was inappropriate to a film that made me think as much as this one does. I pay a fair bit of attention to that period of American history, but must confess that I fall into the easy trap of imagining pre- and post-Lincoln America as oddly compartmentalised, and don't consider the oddness of the time where comfortably middle-class free black people were walking the same streets as slaves, where you could even see plantation owners who have married a black worker, making her the mistress of the house - and the slave owner. This transitional period is of course the background to many civil war films, but I must confess that I hadn't thought about the dynamic of black citizens having such different lives in such close proximity. 

I would consider the film very differently were it not based on a true account - though how much that true account was embellished for political ends at the time is of course a matter of debate. There are some dramatic changes made for a more stark screenplay here - the most significant of which is the events on the boat when Solomon is first kidnapped, where in the original account he persuades a sympathetic sailor to send a letter to his family informing them of his plight (even if he does not know where he is going so it doesn't lead to his rescue), in the film a sailor wants to rape one of the slaves and when questioned, casually stabs the one who intervened. A hard-hitting moment of casual brutality, but not a very believable one when very soon after they're discussing the considerable value of their human 'property'. So unlike in the original story, Solomon's family is left not knowing of his fate at all, meaning that it's actually very lucky his wife didn't remarry. 

But yes, certain things in the film are only really tenable because of the original source. I would be very uncomfortable that essentially, Brad Pitt shows up to spout what the modern audience wants to hear and then effectively saves the day, or that other than one gratifying exchange along the lines of 'Mr Ford is a good man' / 'He is a SLAVE OWNER', Benedict Cumberbatch's character is broadly a good egg if not for their place in the original story - they would seem uncomfortably like avatars for an incredibly guilty white audience who can then convince themselves that if they were there in a time of such casual evil, they would have been the ones acting in ways more palatable to modern audiences. But they are there in the book - and in fact, Mr Ford is apparently painted in a more negative light than he was in the source - and there's a lovely juxtaposition of the cruelties of the men with whips and the tears of mothers torn apart from their children with Christian sermons to drive home the hypocrisy.

I agree with the criticism that this narrow view of one of the incredibly lucky ones - one who was unjustly sold into slavery and then manages to escape to a relatively happy ending - gets in the way a little of the millions of other stories on the fringes of this one where there was no happy beginning and certainly no happy end. Solomon glimpses it, with the men he sees drop dead or get strung up, and chiefly with the film's most affecting character Patsey, but he is really a safe pick for audiences amongst far more horrific stories. 

I am not too troubled by the idea of slavery films as entertainment - like Holocaust films, they are art to provoke thought and introspection rather than fun. I like the angle that it is part of a still-divided society's healing process, and a reminder of the hideous mistakes of the past rather than an indulgence in collective back-patting for guilty white audiences who can feel remorseful and then feel good about their remorse. 

And the technical aspects of the film are superb. McQueen makes odd decisions, but striking and memorable ones. He likes to hold shots a very long time, not just the affecting ones like Solomon teetering on his toes in the mud to avoid being choked by the noose about his neck while life goes on behind him, but the close-ups of faces, of Solomon contemplating freedom, or the leader of the slaves' singing before she begins. It's odd, but it gives a sense of scale and nobility. I like that he went for fanciful more often than stark and documentary-like, which oddly, inversely, makes the story feel more genuine and easy to be absorbed into. The performances are superb, especially Ejiofor (who I remember chiefly from the film 2012), though something about the sheer businesslike callousness of Paul Giamatti was heart-rending. Alfre Woodard also stood out for her sheer matriarchal gravitas. Then there was Hans Zimmer's score, haunting and simplistic - at times just a little too much so - but always effective. 

Obviously an Oscar darling, the film just pushes that little bit past being by the numbers to be carried by its subject matter to one of the best pieces of filmmaking in recent years.