12 Years a Slave (2013) 5/5: Great film about slavery and a very interesting thematic and dramatic work

 

If Django Unchained was pure entertainment with doses of savagery then 12 years a Slave represents the reality or day to day grind of life in a slave society. This is probably the best film, from a historical viewpoint, about slavery in the US. I can’t recall any films tackling this subject head on apart from Django Unchained which was fiction. It does lack certain embellishments that would give it an aura for those not prepared for the daily grind but in its own way it allows a light to shine through by letting things unfold without any forced intervention by the screenwriters. There are no grand dramatic moments here and no razzle dazzle but like they say hope lies within. My favourite element in this film was witnessing the historical materialist dialectic at work. 

The story is about a free black man, living in the northern section of the United States during the slave era, called Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Eliojor). He is a petty bourgeois that plays the violin and endears himself to white society. He is however tricked and sold into slavery in the 1840s by the same people he thought were his equals. The film reveals how he was engaged in a false consciousness for during a tortuous journey on two plantations he discovers the truth about the state that the people of his race lives in. The reality knocks him down. He was never the equal of any white man. He however emerges as a fervent abolitionist in the struggle against the brutalization that existed in an American slave society that was operated by white savages.

Positives

The main element of the film that grabbed me was the transformation of Solomon. We first see him as a petty bourgeois who gallantly plays the violin and entertains the whites at their entertainment functions. We then see him sold unwittingly into slavery. At first, when he wakes up in chains, we see a man who still has faith in the system because he had a lot of white friends and he believed that he had some measure of social standing. The truth becomes revealed to him gradually. Even when he ends up on a plantation he still exhibits naivete because his first ‘master’ Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) is seemingly benevolent.  Solomon believes that this man will help because he perceives that Solomon is not a normal slave. When he is on Ford’s plantation he encounters a female (can’t recall her name) who is always crying because she and her children were sold separately. When he gets fed up and asks her why she keeps crying she tells him to let her cry and that he must be really naïve to believe that his master will help. This becomes apparent when he has a fight with the overseer and then is later strung up in a botched reprisal by the overseer and his friends who were attempting to lynch him. That telling scene, where he is left stranded for the rest of the day with his feet barely touching the ground, is one of the many that will slowly make Solomon come to the realization of his true status in life as a black man in the United States. As a petty bourgeois in the North, as he romped gaily with his white brethren , he never came to grips even in one telling scene where a slave  follows Solomon and his family into a store but is immediately recalled by his master.  The slave thought that he could follow this freed black man into the store. This flashback occurs midway during the film as Solomon reminisces and it is more effective because he must have been wondering how it never occurred to him that his people were being brutalized while he enjoyed a life reinforced by a sense of false consciousness. He had an idyllic home, a loving wife and two (three according to the book) children and mirrored the mannerisms of his nominal white masters. This would explain why he felt that he could, initially, have much faith in them.

                When he leaves Ford he is sold to a brutal plantation owner, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender). His experience on this cotton plantation also drove home the point further about the extent that slavery has  dismembered the black race in America. It reaches such a low point that Northup gives up on his former life and we even see scenes where he engages in the  so called ‘negro spiritual’. He has been won over by the brutality of a system enacted by white savages.  He is even forced to whip Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), his fellow slave and love like interest, by the savage Epps. We know that when he is eventually freed he will not be the same. He will never look on life, as he lived it, in the same light. While it is sad that a man had to endure 12 years of slavery it was a necessary evil for the truth to be revealed to him. A truth he would take with him to his dying days. We all know that when the truth is revealed you become exposed and you see things in a way that no longer impresses or moves you or beats you down unknowingly. Your level of consciousness reaches a stage where you become truly alive. It must be a good feeling when you can no longer be fooled or be lured to engage in illusory escapades that only produce a false consciousness. Those who live in a world dominated by a false consciousness are the true sources of the pain we experience in society. With the truth you can sink into despair or rise up to face the challenge in order to effect real change. This dialectic movement from a free black man in the North enamored with a petty bourgeois lifestyle who is then  enslaved and  again is freed but with a totally new perspective on life is a stunning achievement for this film. One could say this is a cliché: ‘ I was blind but now I see’ however it is all in the telling or the process. The road to the truth is not a yellow brick road it is littered with thorns and potholes.

           

     A lot has been made of Fassbender’s performance as the savage Edwin Epps and I agree that it is good for one reason: the duel with his wife over his relationship with Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). I say this because when he acts like the typical white savage who beats blacks and sees them as animals etc that is nothing new and that element of his performance never impressed me. What impressed me were the moments of pretense towards some measure of civility assumed in the presence of his wife. His wife demonstrates why women are the most reactionary element of any system particularly in a patriarchal system. They embody its values like no other. The wife is supposed to act as a civilizing force for Edwin that engages with Patsey sexually. His sexual engagements with Patsey is a sign of his downfall, according to his wife, and this would explain why she openly attacks Patsey in Edwin’s presence, when the opportunity presents itself, in order to make clear her disgust. Edwin’s love for Patsey is obviously a contradictory element that most white savages never came to grips with during slavery. They treated the slaves like livestock but had to engage with them on a human level. The scene where Patsey pleads with the savage Epps to spare her punishment because she  briefly left the plantation for a bar of soap is a telling one. He has her brutally whipped nonetheless but it reveals that a lot of slave owners had to come to grips with how they treated slaves for initially he did not want to do the whipping and told Solomon to do it. This would explain the directions some would take. Some would be benevolent like Ford or engage in savagery like Epps. When you acted like a savage you could see them as animals or mere beasts of burden and when you became benevolent their humanity would shine through. We see that in his relationship with Patsey Epps is forced to come to grips with the two and his only response is rage whenever he encounters this contradiction. This is another great element of Fassbender’s performance.

              

  Oh beautiful black woman what struggles have beset you in the West for in their eyes you are not beautiful and so you paid the price. Lupita’s performance as Patsey will surely land her a nomination at the Oscars. Well not surely but quality is quality regardless of awards. She typifies the struggle of black women since they arrived in the West from West Africa. One feature of her great performance is the scene where she is raped by the savage Epps. Look at those lifeless eyes. If I was having sex with a woman and saw those eyes I would shrivel up in an instant. Patsey has a relationship with Solomon  and we only see its effects when he is freed from the Epps plantation. When they hugged I was moved  and I  never saw it coming. This was due to the struggle Patsey faced and still faced as Solomon returned to the North. When she asks Solomon to kill her it makes sense for who would want to live in such a savage  system. The apologists and caretakers would say that there is always a way out and that you are defeatist when you say such things. The apologists never had to endure such brutalization hence why they can make good rhetoric. One can imagine the brutalization she would have continued to  endure under the savage Epps. Her struggle is not just one of sexual domination but the surplus product in the cotton fields. She picks the most cotton and we know this when they do  tallies for the work done during the days. If you did not pick a sufficient amount you would be whipped. This highlights that although slaves were treated like chattel they did provide surplus value for the savage white plantation owners.  The slaves were denied basic necessities at times and so when Patsey went to get a meager  bar of soap off the plantation and was still whipped brutally for it, although she picks the most cotton, you begin to understand why even after slavery was abolished blacks were considered the wretched of the earth. Blacks were still the poorest of the poor immediately after slavery. Their wretched poverty began under this savage system and it has influenced how blacks are treated in the work places because initially work done by blacks was usually of the more menial kind and never in the top positions. Black people are hired in some cases to drive down the wage bill and in some cases blacks are not paid equally as whites. Look at the limited status enjoyed by blacks in corporate America. I hardly see any top black executives in the news. Black people normally have to act outrageous in order to get attention in white America.

              We see all the necessary elements related to slave society: an auction, we see the savage Epps hire out his slaves to a judge after his cotton crop is ruined for one season, we see how Christianity was used to justify slavery, we see general savagery on the part of the whites when they lynch blacks and it is good when you are able to see the historical justification for lynching that still occurred even after the end of slavery in the South.  The scene with an aspiring white overseer and Solomon  is very informative because initially we see this man working in the field alongside slaves. Like he said it was temporary until he could assume a more authoritative position which is the only position of respect for white men in a slave society where a majority of the slaves are black.  
              

                Negatives

                The only issue I had with this film was that there were few embellishments which would have made the film palatable. When I say palatable I mean people would not be focused primarily on the horrors of slavery but slave society in general . After a botched revolt on the ship that transported Solomon to the ship we hardly get any meaningful interactions between the slaves in general. Yes there is Patsey but she is the emotive element. I am speaking about his interaction with the other slaves on the plantation where he toiled. How was he perceived by them and so on? We do get the perception of a female slave from another plantation who speaks about how she has the master on lock down etc however it is mostly silence and looks which enhance the dramatic effect in a subtle manner. I am sure there was more dynamism from the slaves on the plantation apart from the ‘negro spiritual’. I am pretty sure Solomon interacted with them or had some insights about the system itself. Apart from his pain we do not get much out of him in terms of his own thinking particularly when he is on the plantations. Steve Mcqueen (the director) focuses primarily on the expressive nature of the white males where we get several perceptions about life on the plantation. Fassbender’s performance will gain more traction than Chiwetel  Eliojor as Solomon as a result. He exists on the basis of his interactions with these whites. When they bury a slave who expired in the cotton fields in service to the white savages, the only comment between Solomon and the slaves is where one male wishes to say something about the man who committed his whole life as a beast of burden to the savage Epps. Like I said this activity among male slaves is there but not on the plantations only when they are on the boat. They focus primarily on the females that give the story some dramatic heft. I wanted to know more about the other slaves on the two plantations the females and males on the periphery. We would then get a story that is not only dramatic but diffused. The dramatic elements would still be there between Solomon and Patsey but at least we would understand the other characters that lived there as well. Well I suppose if you include those elements you get an epic and not a purely dramatic piece of work.  The production team seem to narrow in on whatever heinous treatment is offered but not society on the plantation in general. It seems image based in a way. I would have liked to know more about Solomon in the North and what he thought of the life he was living particularly as he would have been writing from a different perspective. We can guess of course but the movie is based on his words.  I am sure he went through a transition similar to Malcolm X. At the end, for instance, they say he took the men who sentenced him to bondage to court. I cannot recall in the film a scene where he came to the realization that they were the captors because, initially, he believed that they would rescue him because he thought there was a mistake. He never once openly acknowledged their treachery until later. I would not see anything wrong with the narrative route with the help of a voiceover. We would then be able to understand slave society better, particularly as he saw it. 

Those were the embellishments I am talking about. When something is very dramatic you hear that it is tough to sit through etc but even when it is tough to sit through slave society itself would become more evident and you understand that this is the world they lived in for quite a while. In the Caribbean slave society lasted much longer than in the US and some slaves took it as a matter of fact. Their whole psyche was conditioned by the system. If Mcqueen and co. were able to highlight this then this is what I mean by embellishment. This is why the  character is important. Patsey was one slave were there other characters that would inform of us of some line of descent?  Gone with the Wind gave us the abominable Prissy whose type exists even today and the Mammie type and the Big Sam type.  This film, because it had the historical material to work with, could have gone even further by highlighting the various characters. It would then become more informative as a piece of history than a tool for purely dramatic emphasis.  I do get that before they come to the plantation where you see the type that just wants to survive but I am sure there are other types. What about the runaways, the potential rebels etc. All of that is missing. The only time we see runaways is when they are being lynched. Their  absence is even more striking and says something about the slaves on that plantation. Like I said there are the females that act as emotive vehicles for the film but what was happening on the ground apart from Solomon’s interaction with the various white men on the plantations. Well if Solomon himself does not mention this dynamism in his memoirs then I cannot complain but it would have made the film more fulsome while sticking to its dramatic core.

Still a great film and I am sure it will receive several nominations at the Academy awards including Best film. It must be a main contender.