(2 hrs & 14 min, color, 2013)
Not
so very long ago I stated somewhere in writing that a great movie by my
definition is one that deserves viewing again and again, a film that I never
tire of screening and finding new ways to enjoy. Its richness beckons to my taste countless
times; I gladly keep it in my sights, either purchasing my own copy to be kept
on my shelf or at the very least keeping my finger on the sources from which it
can be rented or borrowed. They are
jewels to be valued and revisited ad infinitum.
These are in great contrast to merely commendable movies I have somewhat
enjoyed but would not go out of my way to watch a second time. Once seen and experienced they become just a
pleasant memory.
Commendably
good or first rate great!
But
after sitting through “12 Years a Slave,” I am forced to rethink my
premise. For the first time ever that I
can recall, I have viewed what I regard as a superb motion picture, deserving
of all the recent accolades it has received – Academy Awards, etc. – a choice
bit of story-telling that gives a definitive portrait of a very crucial and
ignominious period in our nation’s history, namely, the slavery era, a film of
top acting, directing and writing stature that drives the message of oppression
completely home, but at the same time it is one that I am not sure I will ever
want to sit through again, at least not anytime soon. When it was over, I could swear that I was
shaking in my shoes. I felt sucked dry
of empathetic emotion. I was a snarling
combination of anger, shame, sadness, outrage, bitterness, broken-heartedness,
and weariness of both body and mind. The
scenes of atrocity I had witnessed played themselves over and over in my
mind. The story cast a shadow that
lasted for many hours.
The
film’s content is based upon an autobiographical book published in 1863 by a
free Afro-American man named Solomon Northup, an accomplished musician, husband
and father of two small children, and a respected citizen of Saratoga, New
York, where he lived peacefully and prosperously with his family, until in 1841
he underwent the nightmare experience of
being kidnapped and sold a slave, ending up on a plantation in the deep south,
his whereabouts unknown to his family for the entire dozen cruel years he spent
there. We have British film-maker Steve
McQueen (a black man himself and no relation to the legendary American actor)
and his insightful writer John Ridley (also black) to thank for this
accomplishment. But still I am reticent
to screen it again.
Am I
trying to discourage people from seeing it?
Not in the slightest! I recommend
it for as many as are up to it. The
squeamish (one of which I am not) might want to read the book instead and not
put themselves needlessly through the ordeal of watching a reenactment. But there is no way the story could have been
filmed without the stark realism, without the pain and suffering treated with
uncompromising and vivid honesty. It is
a tale many times referenced and scanned in previous pictures but never until
now has it been related in no-holds-barred, gut-wrenching terms. I am sure that McQueen and Ridley did not
expect any viewing audience to en-joy it in any sense. It should hurt to watch it, and I am
grateful that I was not spared that hurt.
The
performance that Chiwetel Ejafor gives in the role of Solomon is unimpeachable;
he lives into it, and moves and reacts exactly as we would expect a quietly
desperate man to move and react under circumstances in which his survival
depends upon the total concealment of his free status, education and personal
history. In every particular he made me
shudder and recoil and of course empathize.
This may be his first conspicuous leading role in films, but at only
thirty-seven years of age he has racked up a sizeable list of not only credits
on stage, screen and television but awards and citations as well. He knows what he is up to every split second
of the footage. A native of Forest Gate,
England, his family of Nigerian descent, he is a graduate of Dulwich College in
that country as well as the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
And
yet, he is not the sole executor of the film’s force and bleeding heart. A young petite black lady named Lupita
Nyong’o creates her own wonders as fellow slave Patsy (so named by her
overseers), separated from her children, who endures some of the most cruel and
inhuman treatment ever portrayed in a motion picture. She wrung my heart almost dry. Speak of the bloody but unbowed head! She makes the woman more than pitiful; she
gives her fire and a kind of ferocity that is genuinely heartbreaking. I have no quarrel with the Oscar she won for
her supporting performance. And Michael
Fassbinder as that cruel and abusive overseer Edwin Epps is uncompromisingly
strong and believable without the slightest hint of caricature. He knows how to make the man sly and deadly
as well as blatant – whichever the scene calls for. He is more than a malevolence machine. His character has a psyche, warped though it
may be, and Fassbinder gets into it and is given plenty of room to move around
in it, and he does so with sureness of foot, inciting to genuine fear. What a powerful threesome these make!
So,
you might ask, why would I be hesitant to sit through the movie again?
At
some future date I probably will, but right now I do not want to run the risk
of becoming the slightest bit inured to its explicitness. That is always the danger that movie critics
face. We see so much violence on that
screen, film after film, and so much abuse and tawdriness, so much hatefulness
and vindictiveness and pure savagery that there is always the danger that we
will get used to it, that it will cease to shock or disturb. Shame on us if we ever do! Anyone, film critic or just a member of the
audience, who can sit through the picture and not feel bruised is in big
trouble soul-wise and heart-wise.
Whenever
I do decide to screen “12 Years a Slave” again, I want enough time to have
passed for it to have lost enough of its familiarity that it can still cut me
to the quick. I want it to be new and
fresh again. If I became the least bit
inured to its harshness, that would be a further injustice not only to
Afro-Americans but all oppressed minorities and to the very soul of our
civilization. The movie is close to our
nation’s heart, the dark side of our history that we do not relive with
anything like the exciting pleasure of watching “Lincoln” or “1776” or Ken
Burns’ “Civil War” series or even the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. This one comes out of our darkest closet and
haunts us.
Of
course the most interesting question of all is: How does the film speak to
conditions and attitudes in the 21 st Century? What does it give us to help with our
continued struggle to create a just society?
The racist serpent still sleeps and snores in many an American
mind. Does it surprise us all that much
that the owner of a Basketball team could be caught red-handed with his bigoted
slurs wafting across the social media and earning himself a life time
banishment from the ball club’s affairs?
Lurking still in some of the backwaters of our country is the notion
that the black person must be kept “in his/her place.” There is an Edwin Epps snoozing inside all
of us. We must keep him contained and
dis-empowered.
Yes,
when I see “12 Years a Slave” again, I want it to hurt every bit as much as it
did the first time. I owe it to myself,
to the departed soul of Northup and to my country.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn
about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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