I first read Solomon Northup's memoirs, 12 Years a Slave, in college for a "Slavery and Civil War" course. I remember the astonishment I felt while reading the book and the distinct feeling that this was a special story. Solomon Northup was a free black man who was tricked and sold into slavery. He spent 12 years laboring as a slave, observing the brutal system, and hoping that one day his friends and family would find him and help him reclaim his freedom. It was a wildly successful book when it was first published in 1853, and abolitionists, hungry for factual accounts to support the claims made in Uncle Tom's Cabin, ate it up. It was a riveting story, to be sure; but I never expected it to find an audience beyond historians. Years later, I was surprised to discover that Northup's memoirs were being adapted into a film by British director Steve McQueen.
Steve McQueen's masterpiece is not just an important film; it is a necessary film, one that should have been crafted decades ago. America, though enthusiastic in celebrating an imagined history, seldom faces the uncomfortable truths. We are a society that revels in idealizing our past-- we like our pilgrims peaceful, our patriots selfless, our presidents honest, and our wars heroic. But the past, that great complicator of all things, is rarely so straight-forward and agreeable. It is far easier to brush aside and diminish histories of inequalities, struggles, and atrocities than it is to deal with them head on.
Slavery is one of those topics. Instead of focusing on the abuses leveled against millions, it is more convenient to focus on moments of triumph, especially in film: rather than giving an accurate depiction of the everyday degradations and horrors that occupied a slave's life, filmmakers have often turned to moments of feel-good success and resistance. And so we get Amistad, Lincoln, and Glory. These are all wonderful films that highlight important historical moments. But, these films tell only a small part of the slave story. The American past to which filmmakers gravitate is sanitized for the sake of telling a triumphant history, moments when our ideals guided us and justice was done. Yet, the American past isn't just about overcoming horrors; it's also about coming to terms with those horrors.
For too long, our society has perpetuated a romantic, distorted view of the American South that downplays the brutalities of slavery. The plantation homes that litter the South host tens of thousands of visitors annually. Though many of these plantations have begun to curate exhibits that document the slave experience, many still refuse to do so. Hollywood, of course, is guilty of this whitewashing, too. Sure, films have addressed slavery. But the daily realities of slavery are often brushed over or portrayed half-heartedly. Over 75 years after Gone with the Wind and close to 150 years since the end of the Civil War, Hollywood still has not figured out how to accurately, sensitively depict the reality of the slave experience: the constant, unrelenting exploitation, violence, and abuse that marked a slave's life. But Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is the long-awaited film that seeks to haul Hollywood forward in its representation of slavery.
What's most extraordinary about McQueen's film is that it subverts the romantic interpretation of the American South that many films reinforce. First and foremost, there is the character/historical figure Edwin Epps, played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender. McQueen portrays Epps as a romantic figure-- volatile, passionate, troubled, and destructive. Indeed, Epps' romantic tendencies are highlighted by Patricia Norris' understated costume design. McQueen told Norris to design a "romantic" look to Epps' clothing. By making the monstrous Epps a romantic figure, McQueen undermines notions of the "romantic" antebellum South-- its romanticism was overcome by its violence. This characterization also fits with one of McQueen's leitmotifs: he repeatedly contrasts beauty and depravity, the sublime and the grotesque, the romantic and the violent. He incorporates National Geographic-esque shots of the beautiful, pure Louisiana landscape to contrast with the brutality of the unnatural system of slavery. Like the American story itself, the film is filled with contrasts that undermine the romanticism of the South.
There is a great, albeit brief scene about halfway through the film when Solomon, an expert violinist, is hired out to a neighboring plantation to provide music for a party. In the party scene, we see a room filled with handsome, well-dressed couples who are donning masks and dancing-- this is a masquerade ball, and everyone has come out in their finest. Behind the romantic couples, the musicians huddle at the edges of the crowd, brushed aside and entirely divorced from the gaiety in the room. The musicians are, of course, slaves-- dressed in tattered, dull clothes that are starkly contrasted with the rich, colorful costumes of the white elite-- and they are playing for the benefit of the slave holders who are absorbed in their own world. These musicians are not Uncle Remuses, happy and carefree; they are, quite simply, enslaved people who are forced to play music for their masters. McQueen's metaphor is clear: the American South, decked out as it was in finery, inane romanticism, and gilded temples to its own self-proclaimed greatness, danced to a music of the slaves' making. The antebellum American South, like the whirling couples on the dance floor, wore a mask of gentility and grace-- but, it was only a mask, covering up the atrocious, violent reality of their slave-fueled world.
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| Solomon Northup plays at a masquerade |
I can picture no other director who could have made this film with the same unflinching sensitivity, subtlety, and control that McQueen exhibited. Unlike most films that touch on slavery, 12 Years a Slave does not save the violence for the climax or as the incident inciting the film's hero to pursue vengeance. Violence is not the climax; it's the everyday reality, the fact of life that was common, normalized, and frequent for slaves throughout the American South. By constantly confronting his audience with violence, McQueen utterly shifts our expectations of how we see slavery depicted on screen. Steve McQueen is known for making films that are both uncomfortable and unrelenting-- films like Hunger, a depiction of Irish hunger-striker Bobby Sands, and Shame, an unflinching portrait of a sex addict. McQueen brings that element of undaunted discomfort to 12 Years a Slave, and that is what makes this film exceptional. We see everyday slavery portrayed on screen as it has never been portrayed before, because Steve McQueen won't let us look away. He challenges us to keep watching, to bear witness to the indignities and abuse suffered by millions of enslaved men and women.
The best scene is also the hardest to watch. Solomon has challenged the authority of an arrogant overseer. The affronted overseer seeks retribution and, with his cronies, attempts to lynch Solomon. Though the lynching is stopped in the nick of time, Solomon is forced to half-hang for what feels like eternity. McQueen uses long, unedited shots and refuses to blink, to offer some relief to we, the audience, because Solomon felt no relief. We feel his ragged breath as he chokes on it for hours; we hear his gurgling throat; we see his toes balance the precipice of death, as they dance around in circles in the mud, desperately trying to hold the weight of his dangling body. And, most disturbingly, we watch life continue around him, unaffected by this normalized scene of brutality: slave children play in the background, men and women go about their chores, and the mistress of the house looks on from the porch. It is excruciating. We tremble with Solomon, gasping for air and weighed down by the burdens of a past that we cannot shake, no matter how hard we struggle. To put it bluntly, we've never seen slavery depicted like this before.
Steve McQueen's depiction of the realities of slavery could have gone even farther. Planters' relationships with their slaves were often more disturbing than what is presented in the film. Epps' relationship-- though, I hate to call it that-- with Patsey is just the tip of the iceberg. Thomas Thistlewood, an overseer on a Jamaican plantation in the eighteenth century, meticulously kept a journal of his activities in which he details his mistreatment of his slaves. Thistlewood was forthright about his sexual abuse of slaves, and he appears to have committed over 3,852 acts of rape. Thistlewood also concocted twisted forms of punishment, far worse than the sadistic horrors committed by Edwin Epps onscreen. These stories await future telling in film, as McQueen has opened the gates.
Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is a game-changer. By bringing atrocities front and center with an unblinking urgency, McQueen has utterly shattered our previous expectations of how slavery should be depicted in film. People have been (rightly) praising 12 Years a Slave since it got a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2013. Unlike many of its competitors at the Oscars, 12 Years a Slave will be the film that people are talking, writing, and arguing about for decades to come.
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