I don’t want to know
anyone who doesn’t walk out of “12 Years a Slave” a crushed soul rebuilt from
the ground up by the final and finally at-last hopeful moments of this true
horror tale that is deft enough to show beautiful –- stunningly so -- landscapes
amid recreations of terrifying acts of inhumanity that were the start of this
great (and terrible) nation.
These shots are clear: As they degrade the lives
of those they see as less than themselves, the allegedly greatest of our kind –- rich, educated, and privileged beyond measure -– bring ruin to their own lives with the heinous
need to control and take all treasure.
Brit-born filmmaker Steve McQueen (“Shame”) has
done what few American directors have dare tried: Tell the brutal story of
slavery in the United States with unblinking detail and absolute you-are-there
authority.
This is the anti-“Gone with the Wind,” with its Southern celebration and happy slaves, and certainly the anti-let-us-have-fun-revenge-flick “Django Unchained,” which I like less and less the more I recall my two, one too many, viewings of it.
Solomon Northup was a born free African-American in 1840s New York,
a musician and engineer, until he was kidnapped and sold into bondage below the
Northern line into death, rape, and forced labor that should shock anyone with
a hair of decency.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Children of Men”) plays Solomon, a man
who must deny his own greatness and abilities, essentially his outright
normalcy as a human, lest he be murdered or worse -- and yes there are worse
fates -- by his white masters who will not see anyone of color as their equal.
Solomon
does this for 12 grueling years, his longest stretch as “property” of a sadistic
drunkard (Michael Fassbender, a regular in McQueen’s films) who is abusive to
all around him, including his own wife (Sarah Paulson) who can equal her
husband’s acidic temper.
This is an age when a black slave could be killed for
learning to read or write, an act I cannot even muster in my head as a reality.
But McQueen shows us many disturbing realities – including a brutal whipping
that Solomon is forced to take part in – as every day, and as much a part of
the American spirit as apple pie, George Washington and fireworks.
To deny
this, to ignore it, to wish it away as a past that should be forgotten and “get
over it,” -– and I heard that a lot in Alabama and here in Virginia from racist cunts who then turn around
and celebrate the rah-rah-rah spirit of the Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy, or what their university did in 1881 -- is a great as sin as those who meted out this disaster of inhumanity.
Ejiofor truly, sorry this sounds cliché, this film has robbed me of most words,
astounds in the lead role. I have been a fan of his for years, and now just stand in awe. He plays a freeman forced into not just slavery and
near unspeakable cruelty an acting chore, a sick live stage act that lasts some 4,400 days, an
educated, bright, angry, hopeful man who must show near none of those traits.
That’s
what sticks with me. Burying oneself as dead although you are yet alive, and
long to see your wife and children, and parents, etc.
In one bravo scene, three
quarters, McQueen dishes out a scene that pulls no punches: Ejiofor as Northup
looks out into the sky of his “home” and then directly into the camera at the
audience, daring us to not just continue in his harrowing story but to never
forget his suffering and the untold numbers of his fellow slave captives in an
American that only called itself free, but in a blatant knowing lie, a wink as
the rich and powerful killed hundreds of thousands, or more, of people of
color, all for greed, and wealth, and land.
The final moments, and this is no
spoiler that Solomon lives, where he apologies –- apologies –- to his family for missing out on their lives, just laid
waste to me. Can you imagine? I simply cannot, and have no words. McQueen and company have left me near silent.
(Note: As with “The Butler,” a host of big names pop by for cameos, Brad Pitt among them, but these roles are mostly commoners, owners, bigots, and others, and the cameos do not stick in the crawl as, say, John Cusack does as Richard damn Nixon. OK, stop, hold on, Pitt almost grinds and pops too much a saint-like liberal progressive.)
Lest we need proof this story must be told, loud and in every
corner, lest it ever be forgotten, a darling of the right-wing conservative
movement has written a review of “12” –- without seeing the film, and stating he
has no intention to -– saying McQueen and the film are too “harsh” on slavery,
which has economic merit and can actually be healthy…. That such thought still
carries cultural weight today is truly paralyzing.
And makes “12” all the more
vital. (If you can, read the book source. STAT.) A
