Next month marks the 20th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, a sobering drama about the Holocaust that won the Academy Award for Best Picture and plays just as powerfully today as a tribute to the countless Jews who died, those who survived, and those who risked everything to help other survive. When it was new, it was immediately and rightly celebrated as an extraordinary endeavor in historical education, an investment in the hope that such a thing would never happen again. Just a few months back in July 2013, we marked the 15 years since Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, a grueling testament to the courage and sacrifice of American soldiers fighting Nazis and fascists in World War Two.
Both of those films shine in my moviegoing memory as important “event films” meant to inspire discussion so that all of us commit to building a better future by refusing to forget the horrors and injustices of the past. Both compelled what was commonly called “a national discussion” about what matters most.
They were, in their own ways, horror films — one about the horrors of genocide, the other about the horrors of war. But as painful as both films were to watch, the suffering that we experienced was not because of any gratuitous scenes of violence. We were not being battered into submission to the director’s convictions. Rather, we were required to remember—or learn—the true story of what evils actual human beings had engineered, and could do so again. It was, in my view, humanizing. We were invited to remember immeasurable losses, to grieve them, and to grieve that human beings are capable of such satanic cruelty. We were given occasion to mourn in a way that honored those lost, that celebrated the conscientious and courageous, and that exposed the nature of such evils in a remedial way.
That is to say, such horror films can be educational. They can impress upon new generations the scars of their inherited history, society’s elders passing on what they have learned for the benefit of the future. Art like this can enable us to live with greater compassion for others, and to do build a world in which such acts are prevented.
Nevertheless, as with any man-made monument, viewers would do well to consider and discuss these works of art not just for what they’re about, but also for how they are made — that is to say, with critical discernment. Art is always, after all, the work of human beings and thus, regardless of any noble purposes, they are bound to have their strengths and their weaknesses.
In view of the cultural conversations these two Spielberg films occasioned, they are, I would argue, among the most important films released in my lifetime. But, speaking as a critic whose integrity depends on honesty, I have to admit that both films were somewhat frustrating for me. And I have corresponded with many who share those frustrations. Some aspects of both Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan don’t work for me. They show that Steven Spielberg sometimes doesn’t trust his audience’s intelligence, and he feels too determined to achieve an emotional crescendo, too inclined toward a sentimentality that has always been his Achilles heel.
I say all of this as prologue to my review of Steve McQueen’s new film 12 Years a Slave in order to make clear why I cannot give an unqualified endorsement of this outstanding new historical epic.
This important film immediately takes its place among the most harrowing moviegoing experiences of my life. And I applauded, with tears on my face, just like audiences did at the film festivals where it first played, grateful that America finally has a high-profile, deeply researched, and gloriously realized movie that bears witness to slavery from the point of view of an enslaved human being.
Others have asked the questions, and I echo them: How could such an essential work be so late in coming? And isn’t it a bit troubling that it took a British filmmaker to finally take up this text and bring it to the screen? Very good questions, indeed.
Regardless, 12 Years a Slave is a film I would encourage every American over the age of 16 (in general) to see. It’s important. It’s necessary.
But it is also, in my opinion, limited and even undermined by certain aspects of McQueen’s artistry. Saying so, I run the risk of provoking an angry backlash. But I suspect that such rash comments will come from people who think I disrespect the subject, when nothing could be farther from the truth. I care so much about this subject that I hope to see even more powerful movies, songs, and stories about it.
12 Years a Slave is based on a manuscript of the same title, in which the testimony of a man who was enslaved and then set free, a man named Solomon Northup, is recorded by David Wilson. It follows Northup’s experience as a sophisticated, educated free man in New York; tells how he came to be sold into slavery; and reveals how he toiled and suffered under a variety of enslavers in Louisiana, from compassionate and respectful “masters” (who were, nevertheless, racists) to enslavers who would rape, beat, and even kill the people they called their “property.”
McQueen’s film sticks to that story in its script (by John Ridley) and in its period detail, which are both remarkable. We’re given eye-opening and awful exhibitions of slave markets, cotton plantations, the palatial homes of enslavers, and the squalor in which enslaved people were forced to survive. It’s as convincing and as educational as any big-screen treatment of the subject I’ve seen.
But McQueen’s film is so preoccupied with the horrors of physical abuse — beatings, whippings, rape, humiliation, and hanging — that it seems as though he’s also interested in something more general than these historical events. It seems he’s interested in physical suffering itself as a subject.
This focus on bodily harm will come as no surprise to those familiar with McQueen’s career so far. He’s shown a keen interest in what we do to our own bodies and the bodies of others in order to get what we want.
His first film, Hunger, was about Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands. It was a difficult movie, full of questions about political conviction. Its centerpiece — a debate between a priest and the emaciated prisoner about his decision to express protest by harming himself — was one of the most intense and memorable conversations I’ve ever seen in a film. That movie launched actor Michael Fassbender into the forefront of big screen actors. And it received critical acclaim around the world.
Then came Shame, a film about a man obsessed — perhaps addicted to — sex. Fassbender starred again, this time portraying a man enslaved to sexual impulses. One destructive and self-destructive rendezvous followed another. But this time, the film’s numerous and graphic scenes of sex and violence caused critics to question McQueen’s discernment. It’s one thing to film a thoughtful study of bad behavior — it’s another thing to fill the screen with so much explicit sex that it spoils any suspension of disbelief and prevents meaningful reflection on the subject. This movie seemed, to this moviegoer, extreme to its own detriment.
Now we get 12 Years a Slave. And right away, it feels like a McQueen movie in the best and worst ways.
We see a man and a woman, both enslaved, both suffering. She turns to him, and immediately it’s clear that she is in a desperate state. An irrepressible longing draws them together for a scene of raw sexual consolation in the midst of crowded conditions. It seems to be a deliberate transition from one movie to another: the “sex slavery” of the previous film shifts to a scene in which sexual intimacy is a secretive solace in the context of another kind of slavery entirely.
We’ll come back to that scene again later in the film. For now, it serves to put a question in our minds: What brought these characters to this point? Who are they? Do they know each other? Why are they reaching out to one another in what seems to be desperation? Perhaps they need some release from despair, if only for a moment. Perhaps this is a compassionate exchange, a way to show love, a way to offer some joy—however complicated or costly—in the dark.
Of the several wealthy white enslavers in the film, Michael Fassbender plays the worst. And it’s a shame (no pun intended) that he’s allowed to dominate so much of the movie, because I suspect many moviegoers will come away thinking about him, and talking about him, more than any other character. That is, in part, because he’s the most outrageous presence on the screen. And it is, in part, because McQueen is clearly interested in Fassbender’s complex performance as a man clearly confused by his mind’s enslavement to hatred and prejudice. Once again, his body is a picture of beauty disintegrating under the influence of terrifying forces.
He’s not the only disturbing character. His wife, played by Sarah Paulson, is equally evil in her ferocious jealousy and icy manipulation. Paul Dano shows up playing yet another kind of monster, sneering and shrieking and spiteful. By contrast, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a plantation owner who seems almost like a saint, except when he can’t find a better compliment for Northup than “You are an exceptional n—–.”
What’s left for Chiewetel Ejiofor, in the lead role, is to suffer. To suffer nobly. To suffer dramatically. To suffer in blood and tears and spit.
Ejiofor’s performance is one for the ages. But I would have expected nothing less from him. He’s been one of my favorite actors since Stephen Frears’ excellent 2002 feature Dirty Pretty Things, and he made a memorable impression as a villain in Joss Whedon’s Serenity. Here, his best work is in his restraint. The script gives him numerous scenes in which other actors would have gone overboard with emotion for an Oscar. He makes Solomon Northup a man who struggles to contain storms of fear, horrors, and grief, in order to avoid breakdowns that would lead to irreversible consequences.
Then there is Lupita Nyong’o.
Some reviewers compared Sandra Bullock in Gravity to Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Apparently, if you film a woman in close-up during extreme suffering, you deserve comparison to that great film. I’ll try to avoid snarky responses to that. Suffice it to say that if you want to see a real, powerful, and appropriate allusion to Maria Falconetti’s performance in that classic film, see Lupita Nyong’o and tell me that she didn’t study Falconetti’s Joan. (Joan was, after all, looking heavenward in faith during persecution. By contrast, Gravity‘s Ryan Stone was just desperate to survive in outer space, with only a late-breaking impulse to consider prayer at all.) Nyong’o is asked to play scenes that will cause many moviegoers to avert their eyes. But she does so quietly, giving her character dignity even in moments of torture and abuse.
To some extent, the narrowness of McQueen’s focus is determined by his source material. But as Mel Gibson did with The Passion of the Christ, although to a lesser degree, he structures his film so that almost every situation works out like a mathematical equation the resolution of which is always some sickening outburst of physical abuse.
And yet, even though I find the emphasis on damaged flesh prioritized a bit too much in proportion to other aspects of the story, I’m relieved to say that McQueen is much more inclined toward poetic composition than Mel Gibson has ever been. Even his ugliest images invite us to see more than surface details. Just as the seemingly incidental nature shots are psalm-like in nature — including some drifting shots along a river that look like they were found on the cutting room floor of Terrence Malick’s The New World — so the close-ups of bodily injury take on an almost abstract quality, as if asking us to consider the impossibility of wiping the slate clean. A shot of a steamboat’s waterwheel and the turbulent wake behind it seems to suggest that our history will experience the troubling consequences of this violence for generations.
With all of this visual richness, I find it hard to voice my frustrations without feeling like I’m sitting in church and criticizing the decorations. But I do hope this will someday inspire an even better, more ambitious, more informative movie on the subject — one that requires more audience participation, rather than what amounts primarily here to audience reaction.
I remember feeling this — albeit much more intensely — as I watched The Passion of the Christ: I want to witness much more than just the horror of brutality. I want to understand the context of it. I want to think about where such cruelty and hatred — and where such hope and resilience — come from. That way, I’m left with something more than sympathy for the bleeding victims, and more than anger toward the villains. I might be left with an understanding of the capacity that I have to contribute to that kind of suffering. I might be left with a better understanding of how to find hope in the middle of persecution.
I would like to have seen more consideration of the religious beliefs represented in the songs we (only occasionally) hear the slaves sing. One scene here — in which Northup slowly surrenders to the power of gospel music — is particularly interesting, because we hear the language of scripture employed in sharp contrast to the satanic exploitation of the Bible by the power-mad enslaver. But it feels like one step forward into a question the film fails to explore substantially.
I also wish McQueen he had given more attention to the relationships between the enslaved people. That opening scene of a heartbreaking and humbling sexual surrender seems like a scene from a movie that explores that more fully. I also would have liked to learn more about the context of all this suffering — the business of plantations, the efforts (if there were any) to track down free and respected African Americans who went missing.
And I do wish the soundtrack, simple as it is, didn’t sound so much like a chord progression from a Moby album.
Still, despite my mild aggravation, 12 Years a Slave is much more than the sum of its parts. It’s a powerful, exhausting, and valuable experience. The lingering effect of this movie is, “Yeah, these nightmares really happened. People can be horrible. God have mercy.” I just don’t find that the movie has given me much to think about, or much reason to revisit it…
…unless it’s to admire Alfre Woodard some more. Did I mention Alfre Woodard yet? I didn’t realize just how much I’ve missed her, this queen among actresses, until her one big scene here — as an enslaved woman who has gained respect, sophistication, and some measure of freedom in the Southern caste society. Man, Woodard can steal a whole movie with one complicated glance and a teacup in her hand.
As I exited the theater, and the moviegoers all around me were talking about how they would’ve “just lost it” and “fought back and killed that evil bastard” — I’m not kidding; I heard that several times — I admit with some embarrassment, dear reader, that I was already thinking back to Alfre Woodard’s scene, and how I really should revisit her extraordinary presence in John Sayles’ movie Passion Fish again.
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Is being unflinchingly graphic (and I’d argue McQueen hedges himself, even in several of the celebrated long takes) enough to say that you’ve challenged your audience? Imagination is still required to portray the worst aspects of mankind—you can show the actions full detail, but the real artist also confronts you with the nooks and crannies of the psyche that would inflict such beatings, such unspeakable physical and mental torture. This has never been McQueen’s strong suit; at least as far as his movies go, he’s an outside-in kind of guy. And there’s usually not much ‘in’ there.
This makes the few truly complicated moments of the picture stand out all the more.
It must be noted that, in one important way, the film does pose an affront to viewer expectations: In a story of injustice, audiences today expect some kind of satisfaction. There must be justice or, better, revenge. Take Quentin Tarantino’s lurid blaxploitation-themed Django Unchained, a film that is, in a sense, remarkably frank (by Hollywood standards) about the ugliness of slavery — but in the context of a wildly unrealistic, hyperviolent revenge story, not unlike his alternate-reality WWII film Inglourious Basterds.
12 Years makes no concession to the viewer’s wish for satisfaction or closure. It’s true that Northup is never wholly humbled and, following the source material, refuses to take a beating lying down if he has another choice. But the consequences of his insubordination are so heinous that there’s no satisfaction in it.
Hollywood formula almost demands, in a climactic confrontation, that Northup indulge in one brief moment of victory over a longtime oppressor: a look of triumph, a parting taunt, a sock in the jaw, something. (Even the real Northup confides in his memoir, “It would have been a comfort had I dared to give him a parting kick.”) The film denies the viewer this comfort, which would trivialize the atrocities Northup has suffered.
Awesome thoughts on the film. I tend to agree with most of them – though I think we part ways on both the brutality and the preoccupation with what slavery did to bodies (as well as the lack of info about the economic/political/social structure institution itself).
I also realize I bring a lot to this film, so my view is heavily biased. I can’t watch it without being a historian who deeply cares about this subject, a southerner who is the descendent of people who fought, killed, and died in order to perpetuate slavery, and a teacher who desperately wants her students to get past the list of facts and understand the experiences of real human who went before us and see how the prejudices and expectations of those real humans still linger today.
As such, I thought the film did everything it should have done to faithfully depict Northup’s story. It captured the horror of being thrust into a society that so cheaply defined human life – and Ejiofor’s performance bears most responsibility for that, but so did the writing that refrained from giving us the satisfaction of a triumphant moment, like you point out. It was captivating – I felt like I’d been gasping for air for the duration of the film, and it was hard to breath normally once it ended. That in itself is not necessarily a virtue of filmmaking, but in depicting Northup’s horrific journey, I think it was appropriate.
As for the brutality, having studied the subject extensively, I was surprised at how much was held back. It was shocking and somewhat indulgent – so was the violence of slave-holding America. And I agree with you that the treatment of the violence could distract viewers from the story McQueen’s trying to tell.
But here’s the thing: the most paradigm-bending thing I discovered in my study was the horror of what slavery did to bodies. I know that sounds strange, and I’m not sure how to explain it… but there’s something so tangible, so vulnerable about our bodies, and an institution upheld as God’s plan and used to lay the foundation of this nation built upon something so personal and violating as revoking someone’s right to determine what happens to his or her own body is a unique kind of horror. McQueen’s choices in the film really drove that home in a way I’ve not seen before, and I appreciated that so much.
I have more to say about the film, but I need to think harder before I can put those thoughts into coherent phases.
The acting and direction left me cold. I don’t know why. Maybe I read too many rave reviews. The actress sobbing for her lost children seemed particularly amateurish. There were a lot of pretty shots–but the film lacked a certain psychological truthfulness in terms of some of the performances. It held my interest–but did not inspire me in any way. I read the book–a much more rewarding experience and a thousand times more illuminating on the subject of slavery. One of the most horrendous aspects was the backbreaking toil of slaves from sunup to sundown day after day year after year with no let up. This was pretty much a minor factor in the film. The film seemed “artsy” without feeling historically authentic. It followed the outline of Northup’s story–but in a very stylized, Hollywoodized way. For instance, McQueen has Northup live a more idyllic existence in Saratoga than the book would suggest he lived. His fine house and clothes signify a man of considerable means. Yet he was merely a fiddler–and his wife a cook. Did fiddling and cooking bring that kind of success back then, especially for a black man? I found a curious lack of interaction among the black slaves themselves–unusual for a people whose only consolation was the warmth and deep affection of fellow slaves. The movie shows none of that. More than two hours of suffering–but no interaction worth noting–not even between Northup and Patsy.
Given the many reviews out there who raved on and on about the movie, I appreciate that you were honest and fair.
I think you miss the point of the direction entirely, the narrowness of the focus is a reflection of repression of a slave, there are no books , no theatre , little music, only food work and beatings. This is spelled out to the observant viewer on board the ship where Solomon is told to ‘dumb down’ if he wants to stay alive. One has the wrong focus if the object is to be visually amused, the object in my opinion is a transmission of the sickness of spirit that effects the enslaved and the enslavers alike. The extended depiction of a troubled but essentially but Epps not only shows this but is also historically accurate. The brutality is reserved as the book is much more explicit on the brutality and frequency of beatings. Unlike other films the brutality is accepted in everyday society. McQueens’s marginalising of the violence has an effect which is much more harrowing , drawing the viewer into the world of being a silent observer, complicit through silence to the suffering and sickness. If it gave you nothing to think about you should watch it again.
Pretty much everything you said about the actors is just plain wrong too, there is nothing wrong with studying other actors, all actors do.
“Pretty much everything you said about the actors is just plain wrong too…”
Really? I praised the actors. I offered some challenges to certain aspects of the film, but I was pretty much positive about the actors. So you must be suggesting that I should have condemned them?
“… there is nothing wrong with studying other actors, all actors do.”
I never said that there was anything wrong with studying other actors. In fact, I was praising Lupita Nyong’o’s performance as being very appropriately reminiscent of Falconetti’s. I did say that I thought critics were exaggerating to compare Sandra Bullock’s turn in Gravity to Falconetti’s performance, but that wasn’t a criticism of Bullock.
Methinks you are not understanding my review, because you’re objecting to views that I never expressed in the first place.