Steve McQueen's 12 YEARS A SLAVE, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor

btw I hope I was clear: I don't agree with the consensus i.e. this film works because it shows the violence of slavery. Mandingo is the shabbier and often grosser film but it shook me for days.

e you seen charles burnett's "nat turner: a troublesome property"? if not, you should.

I have! Good double bill.

I thought fassbenders performance was good alfred. To me it was clear that he wouldn't be a monster in a different social reality, where he wasn't in a position to inflict his worst impulses on the bodies and minds of others. He would be a fool, and this realization was chilling for me. The film seemed aware of the fact that slavery was a political issue of people being deprived of rights, not primarily a problem of human evil, even though the political system of slavery allowed all manner of evil to flourish.

i haven't read most of the reviews because most film reviewers suck. but the (largely quite intelligent) reviews I've read don't seem to equate violence w/ reality. i think the film (12 years a slave, that is) is much better than that. the key thing is that slavery was an institution at the foundation of a civilization, an economic institution, and I think mcqueen's films gets the reality of that across as effectively as any film i've seen (note i didn't say as any book i've read).

i hope this doesn't come across as harsh, but i wonder if you're kind of letting the film's reviews get in between you and film, armond white style?

xpost

well put, treeship

I'm aware that I haven't responded to your objections -- I'm on a borrowed laptop -- and I will tomorrow.

It's true I let a couple of facile newspapercrit reviews bug me, but the roots of my objections originate in the passivity of Solomon and how McQueen paces the film around the violent set pieces like a layout designer creating a page around a photo; and I loathed the ending, not so much because it wasn't earned but because the legal measures to which Solomon resorts reveal how the Northern court system didn't consider him a man either, or, to use legal parlance, thought he lacked standing to file a tort claim or whatever. A lot more fascinating than the end titles suggest.

In essence, the movie's rendition of Saratoga and black-white relations in the North is a softer touch than what the memoir reveals (no one was bothered by the ease with which Solomon interacts with white men and women before captivity?).

i don't think it's as much a "soft touch" as much as an absence -- outside of his love for his family (which is itself ideological, i guess, but i'm not inclined to object too much), we don't really get much of a sense of his life in saratoga. the scenes with whites seem studiously designed to offer very few clues about solomon's status in new york (does he even interact with white women?). you could argue this gives audiences who like to identify themselves w/ the north an "out," and i don't think you'd be wrong. and i guess i agree that this aspect did seem streamlined to avoid additional complexity. i'd love to see a smart film about a free black family in the first half of the 19th century.

and yeah the legal wrangling is fascinating not just because of the semi-person status northrup had in the north but also the way that the legal system in the south was the vehicle for his liberation. not sure i fault mcqueen for excluding this though as he had enough to depict as it is.

sorry for bad grammar and typos

I definitely agree that the Alfre Woodard scene is among the film's most powerful, if anyone said that.

You know, I got to thinking about "Schindler's List" when I was debating whether I wanted to see this one or not. Granted, I was too probably too powerless to say no to "Schindler's List" at the time, but I do recall a couple of things about the film that sparked debate. One was that its depictions of various violent horrors was more true/real/historically accurate than those in depicted in previous Holocaust films, and that that somehow made the movie more valid (perhaps). But another criticism was that the movie was told from the perspective of Liam Neeson, which in the end reduced the Jews to just more victims to be rescued (at least that's how I remember the debate), and allowed Spielberg to somewhat soften what might have otherwise been a totally exhausting film (not that the film is an easy watch). Spielberg did the same thing in "Amistad," to similar criticism; it's ultimately more about the white lawmakers than the escaped slaves. But in thinking about this film, which I have not seen and may or may not see, part of its perceived/reported power is that it is told from the perspective of the lead, which makes the horror that much harder to escape. There is no cut to Liam Neeson, troubled and trying to do right, which gives you a breather from the relentless atrocities. Is that at all accurate? The aesthetic boogeyman in his film seems to be the Hans Zimmer score and the odd famous-face cameo or two.

Most of the heavy casting is top-notch, if way too easy (i.e. Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano).

But, yes, there's a more pervasive atmosphere of unalleviated, inescapable evil until a certain beardy Canadian humanist shows up. But even then, and after he puts into motion the resolution of Solomon's story, there's a sense that it's a hollow victory, basically the exact same effect Spielberg was going for with the "I could've saved so many more" scene.

if we're talking about rubbing our faces in graphic violence, none of these films has anything on wang bing's the ditch. not sure if i want to see this one:

http://dgeneratefilms.com/film-reviews/wang-bings-the-ditch-reviewed

Oskar Schindler an opaque figure – thist helped Spielberg.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/12-years-a-slave-glory-without-redemption?page=1#blogPostHeaderPanel

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/11/12/244851884/12-years-a-slave-is-this-years-best-film-about-music

Ann Powers on the use of music in the film

One concern during production had been whether they were measuring the passage of the years in the right way. “We didn’t want to put up captions saying ‘Year 3,’ ‘Year 4,’ or whatever, because then the audience might count down in their heads,” says Walker. So, they decided to add one very unique shot: “Chiwetel under a tree, just looking around — off to the distance, and at one point at the camera.” The scene wasn’t in the script; the filmmakers hoped that the close-up would poetically represent the journey of twelve years on Solomon’s face. And so, after the shoot had effectively wrapped, an extremely streamlined crew — McQueen, Walker, Bobbitt, and his camera assistants — met Ejiofor in a parking lot right outside the cutting room. “All we needed was a tree,” Walker says. “It was a Saturday, a day before the cameras were to be sent back. No craft services, no sound. We all arrived in cars on a day off. We did the shot, right there in the parking lot. And the hairs on the backs of our necks all went up. Then we got back in our cars, and went to dinner.”

http://www.vulture.com/m/2013/11/behind-the-scenes-of-12-years-a-slave.html

i also don't see melodrama as a bad object, and i'm not sure why you would. i also wish you would define your idea of "melodrama" since there are as many definitions of that term (most of them ahistorical) as their are critics. you seem to use the word in a wholly negative sense, which surprises me.

amateurist could you say more about this? like i am dimly aware that melodrama is sometimes a slur, but apparently there is a taxonomy of melodramas? or differences of opinion about what it means?

The Taxnomy of Melodramas! Sounds like a good Northrop Frye title.

i remember a defn like "in drama characters influence events, in melodrama it is the other way around", which seemed too glib?

oh man let me think about this for the weekend, ok?

Saw it, thought it was OK, but a bit of a missed opportunity. I wish it was an hour longer, so that it showed the passage and weight of time a bit more. I also wish it seemed a little less of a cavalcade of familiar white faces getting to overact at length; I would have prefered to see more interactions and relationships between the mostly nameless slaves, who surely spoke as much offscreen as we get to watch Fassbinder froth on screen. And deus ex Pitt ... distracting, at the least. It's sort of a shame he shows up and then bam, more or less the next scene Solomon gets freed. As I told my wife afterward, I find it a little insulting that this movie, set over the course of 12 years, runs 50 minutes shorter than the mostly worthless "Django Unchained."

Odie and Steve take it on: http://bigmediavandal.blogspot.com/2013/11/black-man-talk-12-years-slave.html

― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, November 12, 2013 12:38 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

this is a great read. i agree mostly with boone... i keep thinking about this movie... i dont any coherent thoughts on it, its an impressive and visceral movie but it left me cold outside of some exceptional moments. i wihs mcqueen was as interested in the things i'm interested in i guess. i do think Hunger is still his best thing. also said this in another thread but i wish cranston played epps

boring oscar-bait pabulum imo,but better than the execrable,unintentionally hilarious shame. Seems like,the deeply flawed,hunger was a case of beginner's luck.

Oscar bait is such a strange descriptor for this, aside from the score.

it's certainly not doing anything from a formal standpoint that would disrupt the average american filmmgoer's investment in the narrative. it's a tearjerker and it's meant to be engrossing. that doesn't mean it's not an intelligent, thoughtful, or well-crafted film though, but it is definitely the kind of movie people call "oscar bait"

"oscar bait" remains one of the least useful terms you can use to describe a movie, probably worse than "boring"

it just means "hollywood drama"

there were two movies I saw in recent months that were labeled "Oscar-bait". One was "The Butler", the other was this.

This was much, much better than the former.

"the butler" seemed pretty cynically sentimental. "pcs" is what they should call those kinds of movies instead of "oscar bait"

Well it's not avant garde or anything but narratively it is the opposite of oscar bait IMO. Hollywood Dramas rely on comfortable narrative tropes such as the power of the individual to overcome through the triumph of the human spirit etc, which this film decidedly doesn't.

Xposts

i'm not sure about that. he is reuinited with his family in the end. they don't show the part where he (apparently, according to the best guesses of some historians) was kidnapped again and either murdered or sold back into slavery.

the movie definitely explores brutality with a frankness that (i assume) the butler does not, but still, that's not so beyond the pale for "oscar bait." i agree the term is stupid like all dismissive cliches are stupid, and i like this movie a great deal, but i don't think steve mcqueen made the movie thinking that the oscar committee would never go for something so violent and bleak.

actually, how is this film not about the triumph of the human spirit? he endures unspeakable horrors but in the end he is still the same person. he is true to his word to not indulge "melancholia" and in the last scene he is fragile and shaken but still essentially the same person he was in the beginning, down to his manners, consideration for others, etc.

Oscar bait saves me saying ponderous drama about a BIG subject,with lots of strings on the soundtrack,some harrowing scenes, and a bittersweet ending.

He survives by subsuming his personality and becoming a person that has to go along with the cruelty, and only gets reunited by his family through a Bradus Ex Machina.

That goes back to a problem I had, that Chiwetel Ejiofor, as good as he is at what is he doing, is mostly made to be silent and act with his eyes and demeanor, which is something, but buried a bit behind the frilly flash of frothing Fassbinder et al. It's hard to concentrate entirely on said worthy face - at least it was for me - when almost every single white role was played by a slightly distracting more familiar face, right down to the dude from Madmen or SNL (why them in roles that could have been played but anyone?) or the drunk from Deadwood. The most "Oscar bait" aspect of this movie is Chiwetel Ejiofor, yet ironically he may be the least Oscar-bait thing about this.

The ending ... I'm not sure what to make of it. By any stretch it's a happy ending, in that he is reunited with his intact family. It feels bittersweet because of what came before it; this isn't really a triumph, pe se, almost strictly endurance and sacrifice. I do wish the movie did wait us make a little longer before Pitt Ex Machina (the sympathetic relief-valve white face spouting "we're all not like that" dialog that some stronger defenders of this film for some reason claim the movie lacks).

i dug that pitt's character was the rarely-seen Magical Honky archetype

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/why-i-wouldnt-see-em-12-years-a-slave-em-with-a-white-person/281883/

This is miles better than what the demurrers claim, but I do feel sections of it are either weirdly detached -- from Northup -- and reliant on maximum graphic violence as the only path to the truth. Also disliked Hans Zimmer's perpetual tuneup dirge.

OR reliant on...

You are really covering your bases thoroughly when you cast Paul Dano as the only white man Northup physically attacks.

So Morbs, were you as disappointed by the amount of froth time allowed Fass et al. at the expense of seeing more of Solomon and the slaves in their "off" time? I also wish there was more, or more to, Cumberbatch, who was sort of a fascinating character, clearly conflicted yet corrupted to the soul all the same, which gives him a complexity the other white characters (Dano, stacked-deck drunk/rapist/racist Fass, Giamatti) lack. And I really was distracted by the parade of familiar faces in supporting roles, often to really no or no real necessity. And did you think it should have been longer?

I definitely agree that the Alfre Woodard scene is among the film's most powerful, if anyone said that.
― midnight outdoor nude frolic up north goes south (Eric H.), Wednesday, November 13, 2013 7:01 AM (2 weeks ago)

As Jerry Lewis says, "Very good, one in a row."

JiC, I like long movies if they're good enough, so yes.

For a serious historical film, from Fox Searchlight, I think "familiar faces" are an inevitability, and since Dano (and on limited exposure, maybe Cumberbatch) is the only one who irritates me, no I wasn't distracted. (In the case of Alfre Woodard, one of the great and underutilized American screen actors of the last 30 years, esp not.)

right down to the dude from Madmen or SNL

Well, you know why those wouldn't be familiar to me.

As for abolitionist Pitt, well, there were such people and they did talk like that; I haven't read the memoir yet, but I presume the guy existed.

the guy existed and his speech is apparently almost verbatim, though some argue (quite reasonably) that his dialogue was conjured by the co-writer of the memoir to beef up the abolitionist cause. Dano obv hatable but his rendition of that song was one of the best moments in the movie so I'm cool with it.

The scene where Northup is hanging and everyone else goes about their day, including children just playing around in the background, says a lot about the downtime and the attitude necessary to survive. It was a succinct sequence that spoke volumes. Cumberbatch character not *really* conflicted imo, just an example of a "nice" slaveowner that's still, ya know, a slaveowner, as nicely put by Northup's argument with the crying lady.

Indeed. The hanging sequence happens, when all's said and done, on Cumberbatch's watch.

yeah i didnt need more of the cumberdude, though he was very good in the role (giamatti gave my fav perf of the evil whites)

Yeah, the slave showroom was undoubtedly the most vicious of the Gone with the Wind as directed by Jacopetti & Prosperi sequences.

I played a slave purchaser in an auction scene we did in high school. Yes, we were all white. #70s #suburbs

In 1852, itinerant Canadian carpenter Samuel Bass came to do some work for Epps. Hearing Bass express his abolitionist views, Northup eventually decided to confide his secret to him—the first person he told of his true name and origins as a free man since he was first enslaved. Bass wrote several letters to Northup's friends with general details of his location at Bayou Boeuf in hopes of gaining his rescue.

It's truly an amazing story. I'm most amazed that to the best of my knowledge I never had to read it in school.

Cumberbatch really did play the character as conflicted, which is partly what made him so insidious (and yeah, why he earned his own behind the scenes takedown from the other slave). I thought a lot of the most interesting contradictions took place in this sequence. You see the slave master guy "rescue" Solomon, saving him from getting lynched, but then quickly see that there is no bravery or honor to it at all. It's simply a matter of protecting an investment, and he makes no effort to untie him from the tree. Later, Cumberbatch casts Solomon loose with no sentimentality, just divesting. A lot of this is relatively subtle, which is partly why I did not like the very not subtle Fassbender, true to his character though he may be.

I didn't get to see it, but as recently as 5 or 10 years ago, there was a nearly all-white school performance of The Wiz.