Funny thing at nearly every awards event this year. “12 Years a Slave” wins virtually nothing all night and then keeps ending up with Best Film. So odd that a film where the constituent parts aren’t deemed award-worthy is overall the greatest film of the year. This rarely happens.
Before you ask, yes Chiwetel Ejiofor won Best Actor at the Baftas, but that was due to a) British bias and b) the fact that Matthew McConaughey wasn’t even nominated, something I can only attribute to a blip in the matrix.
When it came to the Oscars, MM won for Actor, with Alfonso Cuaron winning for directing “Gravity”. And “Gravity” won a whole lot of other stuff. And then “12 Years a Slave” won Best Picture (fair enough, it got Best Supporting Actress as well, after the Jennifer Lawrence backlash grew too much).
I have nothing against “12 Years a Slave”, but I do wonder, particularly in America, if it had to win because of its subject matter. It is almost as though to reward “Gravity”, which is essentially a sci-fi story designed to make stomachs lurch and adrenal glands secrete, would somehow be disrespectful to the suffering of real-life slaves all those years ago. “Gravity” isn’t flawless (though it is ground-breaking), but “12 Years a Slave” isn’t flawless either.
Firstly, it is episodic, simply moving from event to event and slave owner to slave owner without really forming character arcs or developing any narrative thrust. There are a lot of cameos from actors that you know from other roles. You could argue that this structure is because it is a true story, but it also means that the lead character is passive in his own life; stuff simply happens to him and, by the nature of slavery, he has to put up with it.
Secondly, it focuses on Solomon Northup, a ‘free man’ who is kidnapped and taken away from everything he knows. There’s a recurring sense of injustice from Solomon that he shouldn’t be there because he has a wife and a family and a house and a job and can read and write. I don’t think there’s a strong enough sense from his character that this is equally unfair to all the slaves; it’s the same for the people born into it, who have never known anything different, as it is for him. Maybe that is just “Schindler’s List” syndrome, where you tell the story of the holocaust by looking at the German guy who saved Jewish people (being the exception that proves the rule), but I felt they could have done with more of Solomon acknowledging the suffering of other people too – people that he is never seen giving two shits about before he finds himself in the same situation as them. This to me should be the main lesson of the film – otherwise, he’s just one person surviving something horrible, like Sandra Bullock in space. All the other slaves are George Clooney.
Lastly, my main criticism of the film is that you don’t feel a significant amount of time passing within the story. If “12 Years” wasn’t right there in the title, I would’ve guessed the timeframe of this film was one or two years maximum. I wanted to feel like he’d been there over a decade in this awful situation, in order to get the full impact. I don’t want cheesy aging make-up or the like, but I think a film can express a long period of time through its story-telling. “The Godfather” (just part 1, I mean) is a perfect example where you feel the weight of the years passing and the impact this has on people as they get older and go through what they go through. Don’t get me wrong, Solomon goes through some horrific shit, but twelve actual real years trapped there must’ve felt like five lifetimes.
That’s enough criticism though, because it is a good film and well worth anyone’s time. It is not an easy watch and it shouldn’t be. What it does achieve is making you feel the injustice of slavery right in your gut. That basic sense of ‘This is awful. How could anyone treat other people like this?’ is palpable. The best example of this is when a slave owner justifies himself by saying black people are basically animals who can’t read or write. A brave soul points out to him that any slave picking up a pen or a book would be severely beaten for their temerity.
It sounds obvious, but previous cosy versions of slavery (like “Gone with the Wind”) or stories that only focused on white people saving black people (“Amistad”, “Lincoln”) risk missing the true horror of being owned by someone who can do whatever they like to you. And they will work you to death. And in 99.9% of cases there is no rescue or happy ending. On a logical level, of course we know slavery is wrong. Really trying to empathise with it, however, is near impossible. That’s what this film is aiming for. The worst sufferings of slavery are personified in the character of Patsey (played by Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar winner) who becomes the object of her owner Epps’ sexual obsession. He’s played by Michael Fassbender. He regularly rapes her. Then his wife, who can’t control her husband, punishes Patsey for ‘seducing’ him. It’s ghastly.
As good as Ejiofor is at suffering with dignity as Solomon, the stand-out performance is Fassbender’s. Surprise, surprise. It’s simply the juicier part. Psychotic-tempered, filled with unknowable self-loathing and armed with a bible to justify whatever he does, Epps is a truly scary character because there are no limits on what he might do. The tension during his scenes is as exciting as anything in “Gravity”.
And so Steve McQueen, as director, must be mentioned as deserving a lot of credit. It’s a gorgeous-looking film and never for a moment dull. I’ve heard it described as the kind of film where watching it feels like doing your homework and that’s unfair. It doesn’t light my ass on fire like “Wolf of Wall Street” and it’s not a movie-movie like “Gravity”, but if the Academy feels the need to assuage its collective conscience by voting for the ‘slavery film’, I won’t begrudge it a shiny gold trophy. Cos that’s makes everything better, right?
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