Twelve Years A Slave: A
Review
The making of this film, TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, must have been more like a mission
than like a job. It brings us a new perception of pre-Civil War slavery and
gives us a look into the psychology of both slaves and slave owners. The tragic face and huge eyes of Chiwetel Ejiofor dominate the
screen as Solomon Northup. His characerization rings true and brings us to
believe in his dignity and his suffering.
The human mind is capable of rationalizing absolutely
anything. If an activity or institution is
profitable, people will accept grotesque intellectual distortions in order to
make that activity seem moral and desirable.
People believed ardently in Adolph Hitler. Pol Pot's gunmen cleaned up Kampuchea (Cambodia) in the name of Year Zero
ideology. Slavery, genocide, mass rape
have repeatedly been rationalized into sweetly benign activities, ostensibly
for the benefit of society. American
racism is a rationalization. Slavery
was a product of that rationalization.
The fuel for this rationalization was the staggering profitability of
purchasing human beings and working them without mercy for the rest of their
lives. Slaves were the wealth of the South.
The Civil War was fought to protect that wealth. This film examines the brutality of slavery
but it also reveals important aspects of slavery's impact not just on slaves
but on those who did the enslaving.
The
film TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE intends to shock the audience but carefully weighs
the degree of shock to keep the audience from recoiling. It's brutal but tolerable within the story's
context.
Solomon
Northup was an upper middle class freedman in Saratoga, New York. When he accepted an offer of a lucrative
short term job away from home he made a fateful error in judgment. He put himself in the hands of white men
that he didn't know. After dinner and
drinks at a restaurant, Solomon awoke in chains, stripped of papers, identity,
rights, stripped of his humanity. He
was shipped south into 1840s plantation slavery. It took him twelve years to find an opportunity to get a message
to his friends and family. Twelve years
of the most brutal slavery passed before a brave man risked his life to
carry Solomon's message.
The
ability to read and write was illegal in Solomon's slave world. Any tendency towards intelligence was viewed
as insolence. A slave who was too smart
risked severe punishment: whipping, torture, even lynching. In order to survive, Solomon had to conceal
himself. He was forced to play the dumb
"nigger".
The
film touches upon the corrosive effect that slavery brought to the owners of
slaves. Plantation owner Edwin Eppes
and his wife lived in a twilight world of marital loathing. Actor Michael Fassbender plays Eppes with a
convincing edge. He's a dangerous man
not just because he's the Master but because he's haunted by temptation, guilt
and the shadowy confusions of his own
hypocrisy.
"Massa"
Eppes was obsessed with the slave girl Patsey (played with incredible passion
by Lupita N'yongo). He raped her again
and again, yet Patsey would rise from her shame and pick twice as much cotton
as any of the other slaves. During a clandestine meeting Patsey offers Solomon her life savings if
Solomon will take her to the bayou and drown her. Shocked, Solomon refuses.
After this exchange Patsey begins to take more risks until she's caught
in a minor transgression and is tied to the whipping post. Massa Eppes forces Solomon to whip her savagely,
then takes the whip himself and nearly kills the woman. He stops before he beats her to death,
saying "Don't push me any further because I like what I'm feeling right
now."
This
film deftly illuminates the corrosive effects of owning other human
beings. In the American South of the
19th century it was a common belief that slavery was good for both white and
black, that slave owning was sanctioned by the Bible and was in harmony with
the natural order of the world. No one
believes that any more but the emotional legacy of such a mindset lingers in
the musty attics of our national consciousness.
TWELVE
YEARS A SLAVE is more than a good film.
It's a necessary film. It won't
change anything. Slavery still exists
in many parts of the world. The film vividly demonstrates how atrocity can only
exist when one group of human beings decides that another group is less than
human.
I
didn't know what to expect from this film but I was surprised (and relieved) by
its pragmatism. Director Steve McQueen
admirably got out of his own way and let the story tell itself. Sometimes the transitions were abrupt but I
didn't care. The story was told. The performances were beautiful. Lupita N'yongo as Patsey deserved her Oscar
as Best Supporting Actor. She was
gut-wrenching. When Patsey begged Solomon to commit an act of euthanasia upon herself
the film stopped time and delivered its consummate message: a life of slavery
is not worth living. I will never
forget the crushing disappointment in Patsey's face when she accepted that
Solomon would not put her out of her misery like an injured dog.
