'12 Years a Slave'

12 Years a Slave is based on the 1853 memoirs of freeborn violinist and carpenter Solomon Northup. Northup,who, through a series of deceptions, eventually ends up being drugged and sold into slavery. He is stripped of his name and becomes but another of the many nameless unfortunates who were nothing more than property to be handled and abused at the hands of wealthy Southern landowners. What follows is an Southern Odyssey in which Northup encounters cowardice masked as kindness (Master Shaw), acute humiliation in being treated in a worse manner than the farm animals (Master Epps) and tentative friendship with fellow slaves (Patsey).

12 Years a Slave might be set in the 1800s; however, it is hard not to draw parallels to our own capitalist system of cheap labor and sweatshops in which modern day slavery is conducted under the banner of progressive globalization. McQueen’s depiction of slavery then picks up where the likes of Amistad and Django Unchained have left open this open dirty secret of recent American history, albeit in a much more subtle, while shocking and intelligent manner.

The introduction of the landscape in its very autonomy relate the fascination of a filmmaker clearly enthralled with the Deep South as a piece of almost primordial wildness. The imagery encapsulates the archaic, beautiful and terrifying. I don’t believe McQueen would be so unsubtle as to suggest blunt associations between human nature and the wildness of the landscape, however, the wide and careless abandon of the latter serves as stark contrast to the imprisonment of the main characters. The fact that no physical bars exist in this South only exemplifies the brutality of stripping a human being of its own freedom to control his/her own life.

McQueens’ film functions through contrast. This also applies to the protagonist’s socio-economic background, as he is distinct from other slaves in being a violinist and carpenter with independent means. Northup is thus not only othered by his enslavement, he also finds no place within the slave community. There is a feigned arrogance to Northup that can only be described as a desperate attempt to hold on to a former notion of identity. Stripped of his real name, one of the most intense scenes of the films has Northup join the chorus of slaves singing at a funeral, for the first time giving any notion of coming to terms with a new existence and emplacement. In the South, the protagonist is neither Northup nor Platt, but represents an eternal subjective in-between. The extreme close-ups McQueen employs, keep lingering on Northup’s face, singling him out and thus re-appropriating an individual identity. The use of close-ups here allows no distance. The spectator is only allowed brief relief in the long shots of the incorporated landscape that nevertheless proves a rather hopeless and uncaring surround to the human drama that unfolds in it. The persistent close-ups on Northup thus relay a sense of visual claustrophobia, clearly conveying the impossibility of escape. McQueen literally forces the spectator to become a true seer. There is no means of visual escape short of covering one’s eyes.

On the one hand, McQueens’ choice of his protagonist’s background ties in with a very American notion of self-improvement and the necessity for individual and collective progress. Read in this light, the roles of the other slaves remain problematic as, of course, they never gain their freedom, almost as if Northup deserves his by the right of connection with powerful individuals, rather than by a human right of equality applicable to all.

One can read Northup’s privileged status, however, also in an instrumental fashion, in that in his life, the gulf between his former and present life becomes vividly illustrative of societal negation. Northup’s status thus clearly provides a comment on the barred access to education and career for most other African Americans in the film.

McQueen usually chooses one colour scheme for the film and then sticks with it, whether it be the inhumanly green of ‘Hunger’, the cold and detached blue of ‘Shame’ or, in this case, an anachronistic, almost rustic brown. I’m not sure whether the colour scheme in its sepia tones does not introduce a distanced view of events that still qualify as recent history. The rather stilted manner of Northup’s speech also transfers the viewed inhumanity to a space of the ‘far-removed’. I am aware that all these mannerisms serve an idea of historical authenticity and remain rooted in Northup’s own autobiographical account, however, I was left wondering whether the introduction of late modern elements to the mise-en-scène might not have rendered the historical nearness of the events themselves more accessible. Only in scenes of extreme violence does the film lose its detached, read historical view. In this sense, the film works through visceral shock.

As to the performances, McQueen, as usual, has a stock of actors who most of the time can do no wrong. Chiwetel Ejiofor’ performance becomes powerful not so much through grand theatrical gestures or outbursts as by subtle approximation. His performance consists in the minutest facial gestures that nevertheless capture the enormity of his life events. This man clearly is made for close-up and McQueen obliges.

Lupita Nyong’o is an absolute revelation in her role as Patsey, the unfortunate slave girl who has to endure her master’s infatuation with her, while Michael Fassbender here almost pales next to her. Fassbender nevertheless plays Epps with an intensity that relays not only the inherent sadism of the character but also a clear sentiment of self-loathing and torment. Benedict Cumberbatch does a fine job of playing Master Shaw and transmitting the shame implicit in conscious cowardice. The only proverbial bad apple lies in the casting of Brad Pitt as benevolent Canadian anti-slavery advocate, Bass. Surely it’s not for lack of trying, but his all American face does the role no favours, as does the flippancy of his performance.

One character that perhaps has not received the critical acclaim it deserves is the one of Mistress Epps played by Sarah Paulson. Her status is just as limited and unfree as the slaves in this society that is not only racist, but also patriarchal. Her only privilege, of which she takes full advantage, thus lies in the fact the she remains one level above the societal position of a slave. She is equally part of the property held by the master, in this case her husband. Instead of sympathizing, however, she indulges in cruelty, not so much inhuman, as shocking in its very humanity, as she is a product of her times, upbringing and sex. Her character thus illustrates how an individual is very much a construct of societal norms, rather than her character portraying a notion of the inherent human goodness against all odds.

As Fredric Jameson rightly notes: ‘History is what hurts.’ Too long has late modern historicity called for an abandonment of the legible body in favour of a polyvocal expression of embodied micro-existences. It seems as if the artist has taken up the call; here, Steve McQueen’s film excels in its depiction of the effect of history on the material body. The societal norms and cultural values thus lose their status as a discursive moral conceptualization and come to enter a dialectical relation between viewer-body and body-on-screen. Simply put, spectatorial distance is aggressively dismantled, as explicit images of torn flesh and the brutality of a whipping leave no safe space from which to observe. Here, narrative becomes as ineffective as unnecessary as McQueen clearly understand the usefulness of the visceral in terms of spectatorial identification. He cleverly blurs normatively lived lines from the past as no matter whether black or white, torn flesh remains torn flesh and will be related to as such. In the end, everyone’s got a body and we know what it means to feel pain. He thus introduces a notion of responsibility that has less to do with knowing a moral concept as wrong as with sensing and seeing the wrongs of a recent historical reality.

All in all, McQueen walks the filmic tightrope of historical epic and shocking reality of recent historical events with much skill. Even if certain elements of the mise-en-scène prove distancing in their provoked anachronism, the inherent and visceral material reality of abused bodies negate a notion of safe spectatorship and refuse the relinquishing of subjective spectatorial responsibility. The film’s crucial strength and force lies in the ferocity and brutality of a very visible notion of the topic of slavery. This is not a clean view of history; it is a portrayal of the blood, sweat and tears of a very recent historical reality that provokes the parallel re-alignment with our own lived reality and all its injustices. The telling of one individually lived and embodied narrative thus manages to convey the incomprehensive injustice and suffering of an entire people.

Not to be missed.