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

I want to watch it again, but I also got the sense that McQueen and John Ridley thought the audience could not handle a less tidy ending.

(Solomon's return to NY commenced the third act of a horrifying ordeal, as the book shows)

my reaction was similar to yours tom especially re: the 2nd point, but at the same time i think well that was just Mcqueen's approach and i guess i think it was a valid one, isolating solomon like that - just not what i really wanted - Vern puts it well imo - He doesn’t want to take it like anyone else. He doesn’t want to find solace in religion and music, like you always hear about. In one unique scene he sits silent through a long closeup before he finally joins in on the singing. I think he doesn’t want to just be another member of the group. He doesn’t want to give up on being a unique individual. But eventually he has to take the plunge.

I had a problem w/the filming of the sex scenes too: Solomon as passive thing, to which things are done.

if it's Fox Searchlight, even a grim story is ending on an up note.

(particularly what the soundtrack is doing) (man the soundtrack)

that's easily the worst thing about the film, i think. it's not even Zimmer's fault for writing a bad soundtrack (although it's unsubtle), it's McQueens fault for ramming it down your throat. It made me think that McQueen takes his entire audience for cretins.

in twelve years, what do you think he talks to these people about, with his entirely different accent and background?

well, I didn't even get the feeling that 12 years had passed. How long is he supposed to be at Epps'? No one changes appearance or otherwise the entire time.

In spite of this I actually think it's mostly a good film though and sometimes an excellent one. The ending is extremely underpowered though which, considering how hard McQueen pushes some other scenes, is disappointing. I'm sure it's intentional though.

Great post though, thomp. Can you say more about these points?:

i'd want to argue that (for all that it refuses to leave northup) the film's narrative isn't first person and the northup character isn't the author of it.

iv. this makes his being able to write more a marker of what the white characters claim it is, being "larned", seditious, superior. -- when epps is arguing at the end about northup being not a free man the film seemed worryingly close to subscribing to his logic ...

alf: yeah so that sex scene in the beginning s his only prolonged interaction with another character that isn't made explicitly about white ppl, right ...? and even then: ...

ade: yeah that scene is interesting though! like i think its inclusion is the best argument, certainly, that mcqueen is taking this tack deliberately. i found myself resisting being moved by it because, yes, it seemed like a gesture towards the film i'd have rather been watching; also, because elijofor's voice is mixed too high in the sound design in a way that i thought was mendacious

jed like i say i don't know if i can articulate it. the film knows that the modern viewer understands that epps' claim ('if solomon did not have free papers, my treatment of him would be justified') is a wrong one. but i had a fairly queasy feeling watching that scene (and i think an unintentional one -- if i felt like it was deliberate i'd be acclaiming it) that the film had forgotten to establish that this is wrong by its own lights. like the internal logic of the narrative does not address this; instead brad pitt comes along and explains it.

"his only prolonged interaction with another character that isn't made explicitly about white ppl" chronologically after he's kidnapped, i mean.

the soundtrack didnt bug me. when i saw zimmers name in the end credits i was like 'whoa hey, wouldnt have guessed'. i watch a lot of hwood crap though and they all have bad scores... like Lee daniels The Butler

best scores are like, idk, dredd type scores.

greedo

these days anyway, wrt mainstream hollywood

thomp i like your posts, they are interesting. i am too busy to respond with anything for the moment, but i wanted to note that.

I liked the deployment of zimmer he was the skrillex of this film

lol

she's in the film for a total of about 5 minutes but Sarah Paulson blows everyone else off the screen as Epps's wife, imo. Amazing performance.

yeah paulson killed it.

My family was urging me to see this a few months back but between this thread and other critical voices, I'm not sure I ever want to

Man that Hans Zimmer theme that plays endlessly through the movie is basically Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)" and it was kind of driving me nuts.

I'm in the middle of Northup's book and some of the elisions and changes of the film are striking for assorted reasons... eg, the Dano character was actually his second of three owners, and Solomon speaks quite well of his first owner, something you'd be wise not to even attempt w/ voiceover.

Epps was "portly" btw.

For anyone that cares, this explains why McQueen and Ridley snubbed each other during their acceptance speeches last night: http://www.thewrap.com/oscars-rift-fight-john-ridley-steve-mcqueen-12-years-a-slave

Hoberman: http://harpers.org/archive/2014/03/here-there-is-no-why/

yeah, I wondered how ppl saying this film wasn't "hard" enough would react to the book's eye-popping line on "the bright side of slavery."

Northup’s book, transcribed from his oral account by a white man, the New York state legislator David Wilson, is notable among so-called slave narratives for its specificity in names, places, and dates.

this is what most impressed me

oh I see Hoberman's essay is a continuation of his American cultural studies.

btw The American Conservative approvingly dug up an 8-year-old Esquire essay on race and politics by John Ridley:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/new-black-americans-john-ridley/

Solomon speaks quite well of his first owner, something you'd be wise not to even attempt w/ voiceover.

He obviously quite likes him in the film!

yes, but the book explicitly calls him "a good man" and Christian who's a sort of victim of his moral environment. Moreover, it says some similar things about Mistress Epps.

the movie does an excellent job in showing how the first owner is both "nice" and perhaps even "liberal" (in a formulation I'm not sure is entirely anachronistic) but also totally complicit in the perpetuation of the institution of slavery. i think that's one of the most remarkable things about the film, especially a film that won the best-picture Oscar.

I wonder what would have happened if the film parted ways with the book's narrative and:
- further deemphasized the means of Solomon's liberation (that is to say, Brad Pitt's Quaker carpenter; since we don't see anything else of the machinations that allowed him to be freed)
- further emphasized Patsy's POV as Solomon is riding away to freedom
- after the ellipse, stayed with the slaves on Epps plantation, who continue to toil in misery
- ended without a resolution and group hug

I'm not getting on my high horse suggesting the movie _should_ have done this, because there is certainly an integrity in sticking largely with the narrative as it was published. but I think the full visceral effect of the point that J Hoberman and others have latched onto--that in a culture of slavery "there is no 'why'" and Solomon's liberation is as arbitrary as his enslavement and does nothing to diminish the horrors of the institution--may have been partially lost thanks to the film's ending. you can give credit to the screenwriter and director for believing that the audience will not take the ending as an affirmation of the rightness of the world, but rather consider those who were not liberated--and still wonder if most of the actual audience lived up to that respect.

I took it on faith that the reason I wasn't tearing up at the end was b/c McQueen had done a good job conveying the emptiness of his rescue against the bigger picture.

Well, I floated a second theory too, but opted for the first one.

and because Ejiofor isn't a group-hug sort of actor anyway (and neither is Solomon).

yeah, I think you can definitely read that scene in the tradition of "happy endings" that are anything but (see also "bigger than life," lots of fritz lang films).

i do think that for all the critical rumblings (or maybe there aren't so many?) this is one of the best best-picture winners in a while. at least since "no country for old men."

I think even those ambivalent about the mice would have to agree with that.

Movie. Not mice. Movie.

mice?

xpost

HA

i thought you were making some really deep reference to "babe"

I agree, and expect that is entirely a coincidence. xxxxp

I think "Gravity" would have been an even better choice, but who really cares. it's not like that movie lacked for critical plaudits (if anything there was even more of a consensus than re. "12 Years") or commercial success.

I was gonna say "best since The Hurt Locker"

"hurt locker," pfffff. not even near bigelow's best work, and falls apart on second viewing IMO.

more important: is mcqueen the first experimental filmmaker to go on and win a best picture oscar?!?!

except for peter kubelka's "crash," i mean.

I've made my peace with Gravity getting the consolation prize owing entirely to the face that now at least we've all been spared thousands of think pieces.

I'm still fond of The Hurt Locker but I haven't seen it a second time.

I've watched NCFOM a second time.

xxp you should see Kevin costner's student films

is mcqueen the first experimental filmmaker to go on and win a best picture oscar?!?!

Spike Jonze ascent arguably more surprising. Funny he would win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar the same year he also wrote "Bad Grandpa" (which also got an Oscar nom!!!!).

"hurt locker," pfffff. not even near bigelow's best work,

it isn't but is near the top of Best Picture winners.

to me that just means "not near Near Dark."