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

You know you want it: http://cityarts.info/2013/10/16/cant-trust-it/

man that site has really gone downhill lol

mcqueen on charlie rose said he wants the book to become as well-known, read in schools etc as the diary of anne frank

Gordon Parks made an earlier adap for PBS starring Avery Brooks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup's_Odyssey

(also as I do plan to see 12YaS this weekend, I'm not reading plot-recounting reviews per usual)

Armond doesn't recount the plot, mostly complains about the Exorcist.

this is like the only movie left this year that im pumped about

Gordon Parks made an earlier adap for PBS starring Avery Brooks.

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 3:01 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

damn. and joe seneca! and john saxon, lol. wonder if i can track that down

had a hard time reading that whole Armond review cuz of the formatting but it seems like basically his argument is that he doesn't like the movie because it's depressing...

judging from my skimming, he's not alone

My twitter feed is convinced he doesn't like it because white people, who are racists, love it.

http://davidsimon.com/slavery-a-film-narrative-and-the-myth-of-original-intent/

[McQueen is] brilliant at suggesting how long a minute can last, though wobbly at depicting the passage of years, which matters here.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9868597/12-years-slave-best-actor-race

otm quote

this is like if Gravity was about slavery

Not the right thread, but his questions about Redford's range is an actor are otm.

I've never known M.H. to NOT write something totally otm.

quoted the company's copresident Nancy Utley as saying, "We always wanted people to know that it's '12 Years a Slave,' not '1 Million Years a Slave'"

omg

Not 165 Minutes a Slave

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9870721/the-cultural-crater-12-years-slave

My review of the thing.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/12-years-a-slave-black-oscar-bait-essay.html

My reaction to 12 Years a Slave is borne, largely, by exhaustion. I am worn out by slavery and struggle narratives. I am worn out by broken black bodies and the broken black spirit somehow persevering in the face of overwhelming and impossible circumstance. There seems to be so little room at the Hollywood table for black movies that to earn a seat, black movies have to fit a very specific narrative. Thoughtful romantic comedies like Love & Basketball and the original Best Man, which has a sequel later this month, fail even to be included in most conversations about movies. Sure, they're not Oscar contenders, but they certainly capture the black experience and yet, somehow, they're viewed as being less worthy of talking about than similar fare like Enough Said, which has earned many plaudits.

not endorsing this podcast, but it mentions you're write-up there, Alfred: http://www.soundonsight.org/12-years-a-slave-and-all-is-lost-sound-on-sight-podcast-368/

In which Richard Cohen learns some things.

it mentions you're write-up there, Alfred

It mentions me? Thanks!

Your*

how embarrassing...

My wife, not much of a movie-goer, out of nowhere asked if we could see this Friday night, and I pretty much said no. The last time she did this was when the hype around the hamfisted theater of the horrific "Precious" was high, and I said no to that one, too. Now, the pedigree of this movie is much stronger, but it still seems like the last thing I want to see. Am I wrong to just say no? I told her she was welcome to see it herself, but it does not seem like the sort of movie I'd want to sit through with her. I'm not sure I'd get anything out of it beyond feeling miserable, which I pretty much do, anyway, whenever I think of slavery. I'd rather read the book, as the tragic roots of America seem like something that would be better sussed out internally, personally, not collectively, surrounded by hundreds of people sitting in a theatre.

You should see it. It's certainly not Precious.

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

[McQueen is] brilliant at suggesting how long a minute can last, though wobbly at depicting the passage of years, which matters here.

yeah this is exactly my thought. the film is hard-pressed to really suggest the years that have passed. i think this is a basic screenwriting problem that could have been solved pretty simply.

that said i think the film is pretty amazing. it's a lot better than it had to be, at the very least.

also, alfred, although i like your writing a lot, i have to say i disagreed with almost everything in your piece on this film. i also was kind of taken aback by what I perceived to be its condescending tone.

re. suspense: we can know the "ultimate" outcome of a narrative and still experience suspense, surprise, etc. surely this is why we can rewatch alfred hitchcock films countless times and experience the same emotions each time. philosophers know this as the "paradox of suspense." but i do agree that the film did not expend a lot of time or energy manipulating those emotions, at least not once solomon is sold to epps.

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.

inevitably a film like this is designed to "manipulate," which is to say to give rise to, our emotions. that mcqueen would use the resources of melodrama to generate emotional effects seems to me neither surprising nor essentially objectionable. i think we can object--without denying the psychosexual ravages of the institution of slavery--to the way mcqueen perhaps excessively psychologizes the cruelty of slavery in the almost psychopathic figure of epps. he is perhaps too easily a villain, redolent of the (yes, melodramatic) conventions of the abolitionist ex-slave narrative, one of which is of course the source for the film. but compared to most hollywood "issue" pictures mcqueen's film is a model of intelligent restraint and complexity. i do think it provides a good, though hardly a complete sketch of slavery as an economic institution, which to my knowledge no other American film on the subject has done.

i really don't grasp your objection to the scene w/ alfre woodard. i do think that the scene felt a little truncated, but that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at. her character initially presents a pointed contrast to patsey. she imagines patsey could follow in her footsteps, manipulating the slaver's affections and desire to achieve a much better position; but she discounts, or doesn't recognize, how decrepit epps's moral sense is. of course, she recognizes her situation for what it is, and makes clear her bitterness and moral clarity. maybe she seems to have too complete a consciousness, too lofty a viewpoint, for someone in the thick of history. but I don't think she really functions as an audience surrogate, providing an ahistorical perspective we can feel comfortable assuming ourselves. if that's what you are suggesting.

when you write that the film doesn't really want to touch the issue of the "pleasure of giving pleasure" to one's abusers... I couldn't disagree more. maybe its not the film's most explicitly stated theme, but it's very present and it would take a truly oblivious viewer not to pick up on it. indeed, solomon and clara (I think that's her name; she's the one who is separated from her children at auction in new orleans) have a conversation about this very thing. and i was frankly started by the way the film reminded me of some of the more perverse, insidious aspects of relations of power. solomon and others do, indeed, seem moderately pleased to do their masters' bidding even if that pleasure produces an almost immediate nausea. it all reminded me that slavery is an extreme expression of power imbalances that seem to inhere in all societies (i'm not gonna be a good leftist and write "capitalist societies" b/c I think this sort of thing is endemic even in primitive societies).

i feel like you were reviewing a different movie from the one I saw.

Good response, am.

I can't answer every point at the moment , only this: i do think that the scene felt a little truncated, but that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at. her character initially presents a pointed contrast to patsey. she imagines patsey could follow in her footsteps, manipulating the slaver's affections and desire to achieve a much better position; but she discounts, or doesn't recognize, how decrepit epps's moral sense is. of course, she recognizes her situation for what it is, and makes clear her bitterness and moral clarity. maybe she seems to have too complete a consciousness, too lofty a viewpoint, for someone in the thick of history.

You're right about the last point. So brief is her appearance and so fraught with importance that I got frustrated at the movie's reluctance to grapple with what she represented.

As for my criticism of the film as 'melodrama.' No, of course I don't object to it per se, but the arc of the story as filmed elided many of the book's complexities such that the results took the shape of what I call the triumph narrative. Epps in the book is not the same kind of monster that the script and Fassbender's predictable, monotonous performance suggest -- and, of course, I'm aware the book itself is a fiction.

i don't think it's a "triumph narrative" at all, at least not compared to other issue films like amistad or whatever. solomon's liberation is a deus ex machina (or maybe brad pitt ex machina?)--he couldn't have, and didn't, do anything to bring it about except for confiding in pitt's quaker carpenter. the ending feels deliberately unreal and abrupt. I guess I was hoping for something unexpected or defamiliarizing in the last scene, but that probably says more about my art-cinema-trained tastes in movies than anything else.

i do need to read the book. can you say more about how epps is described there?

i do sort of hope this feels seems, in retrospect, like it was overpraised on first release... because that would imply that it will spur on more (probably less high-profile) films depicting new world slavery that won't share 12 years a slave's burden of being the film about slavery, as opposed to a film about slavery. (yes, i know that there have been major hollywood films about slavery, but most people writing about this one don't seem to acknowledge that.)

(btw I think the criticism of this film as awards fodder is kind of unfair and beside the point.)

The writing about this film acknowledges other films about slavery but the violence in this one makes it the most "real" (realism in literature btw praised and condemned in 19th century for equating violence with truth).

yeah but mandingo is crazy violent too

i still don't think there's anything in 12 years a slave that hits me as hard as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rartZgAC2R4

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

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.

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."

serious question though (re. is mcqueen the first experimental filmmaker to go on and win a best picture oscar?!?!)

xpost

i wouldn't put it near the top at all, not when you've got

7th heaven
it happened one night
rebecca
how green was my valley (best win ever)
casablanca
going my way
the lost weekend
best years of our lives (2nd best?)
an american in paris
gigi
the apartment
...this is about when things take a turn for the dire... but there's still:
patton
the godfather
rocky
silence of the lambs

near dark is great (though my students didn't think much of it), point break is good, strange days has its moments (though is intensely dislikable)... yeah I guess you can consider her overrated.

the loveless has its moments too. i think kathryn bigelow is very talented as an action director, but "hurt locker" was rather pedestrian in that respect. but as a PHENOMENON (powerful feminist director of male-orienated action movies) she is pretty singular.

anyway let's get back to 12 years a slave.

i make the whirly-crazy sign when the young Turks talk about movies like Point Break as "great" .. oh man, Strange Days too huh...

Going My Way is no Bells of Sy Mary's and The Lost Weekend is no Kiss Me, Stupid

Gigi? Oy.

Anyway.

gigi isn't the best of the best but it's an excellent movie!

and i left out good but not great stuff like all quiet on the western front, the sting, etc. i don't even think "hurt locker" is that good.

I just read Alfred's harrumph about 12 Years of Slave and man, Pauline Kael has a lot to answer for. :D

this was posted in November and it's terrific:

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

I just saw Gigi again and like it too, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" is creepiest and it's over quickly.

I liked it! Kael wouldn't have seen anything with "Steve McQueen" in the credits.

Let's follow am's advice and confine Oscar chatter to this thread: vote for the best Oscar-winning Best Pictures of all time

yes, fine

haven't done my rewatch yet, so that's all i got

You can always put that ...

patton
rocky
silence of the lambs

... where your heart ought to be.

cross-posting from that other, more appropriate thread:

http://www.ofcs.org/the-best-of-the-best-picture-oscar-winners-part-6/

Pretty amusing juxtaposition:

22. Gone With the Wind (1939)
23. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

well they pretty pointedly didn't follow up the wizard of oz tribute with a gone with the wind tribute, did they? would have been pretty awkward.

am still waiting for the "young mr lincoln" tribute with rows of dancers in top hats and beards.

btw we all know John Ridley wrote and directed the imminent Hendrix movie starring Andre Benjamin?

Is it called 12 Minutes A Solo?

No, that's the title of the Yngwie Malmsteen biopic

So what is the rift between Ridley and McQueen about? Yes, as reported by The Wrap, McQueen did discuss sharing the screenplay credit with Ridley, who told me that he would have shared the story by credit if he could with McQueen, with Ridley taking sole screenplay credit. He had settled for a story by credit once before, when writer-director David O. Russell took the screenplay credit on "Three Kings." No rancor there anymore, as Ridley gave Russell, and not McQueen, a hug on the way to the Oscar podium. (Ridley also hugged "12 Years" producer Dede Gardner, who developed the script with him.)

Ridley explains that when a screenwriter adapts a memoir, the Writers Guild of America won't permit a story by credit--in this case, Solomon Northup wrote the true story that the movie is based on. As Ridley wrote the first draft for Plan B (on spec), it would be difficult for a director like McQueen to get a shared Screenplay By credit, which would require a WGA arbitration. "For both of us, I would have been happy to have Story By credit," says Ridley. "Steve never tried to get an arbitration. A lot of people assume we wrote the script together every day for four years. The reality is that Steve lives in Amsterdam and I live in Los Angeles. We met a dozen times at most. I can't say in all honesty that Steve and I had an opportunity to become super tight. It starts to bother me when the story becomes that we didn't give each other foot massages. Steve was never not deferential to me and I hope I always expressed admiration for him, the cast and crew. Steve did a lot for me. I don't know if Steve is upset. We got to have our moment. It was a beautiful moment for us."

Ridley points out that he thanked McQueen many times over the season, including the Independent Spirits the day before the Oscars, and that on the Academy Awards show, many folks omitted any mention of who wrote their movies. "We should have equal concern for people who did not get their due," he says. "People included me in this. I never got the sense that I should go stand in the corner." Ridley kept his 30-second speech short on Oscar night, thanking Solomon Northup. (Truth be told he was relieved that he didn't cry, something he tends to do.)

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/12-years-a-slave-oscar-winner-john-ridley-talks-rift-with-steve-mcqueen

i went into this with some dread but ended up really liking it. most of the things that people objected to i thought were either not-problems (the passage of time) or really great (zimmer) or probably just plainly true (pitt's canadian laborer)

sarah paulson is just crazy good. nobody in it was bad at all except maybe pitt, who isn't exactly a bad actor but just seems like someone who's unfamiliar with the act of talking

boring oscar-bait pabulum imo.

― tell it to my arse (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:18 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh, fuck you. we have "folk heroes" saying shit like this dude, and this shit doesn't even surprise me in the slightest. we need people to make movies like this. people need to see movies like this. if some "oscar-bait" film gets a large number of people to think about 400 years of slavery that basically happened about 5 minutes ago in our history, i'm pretty happy about that.

anyways, i thought it was really good. agree with some of the criticisms upthread, especially re: brad pitt (who as an actor is just too distracting for any film) and the lack of portrayal of other slaves besides solomon and patsy. i also feel like it could've been an hour longer, for sure.

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.

this is otm, too.

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.

yea, i was certainly thinking about patsy and the others who were left behind, standing around as solomon looks back from the carriage, but i think that effect could've been made a lot more powerful if the other slaves were more developed as characters in the film.

re: solomon's lonerism, the fact that we didn't really see him interacting much with other slaves (besides patsy and the woman earlier, eliza?), was definitely somewhat of a fault. at the same time though, i kept thinking about basically all the other slaves, born into this, will die into this, and solomon has this whole other existence that he continues to have some hope of returning to even amidst moments of great despair, and that to settle into this life would to be to surender that hope. obviously that scene when he stands silent during the slaves' song but then joins shows his acceptance taht he's there and not going anywhere, and it's a rare moment and that's what made it so powerful for me, at least.

yeah the scene with him falling into (not 'breaking into' as we usually say) song is key

i find it kinda weird and sort of reprehensible that any mainstream movie that deals with any remotely serious historical subject gets dismissed as 'oscar-bait,' as if you could class this movie with something like 'the king's speech' or whatever.

i agree

also for all the criticism the pitt character gets (either b/c he's a "white savior" or b/c he's brad pitt), i kind of thought this was interesting, from http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/17/_12_years_a_slave_true_story_fact_and_fiction_in_mostly_accurate_movie_about.html:

Bass (Brad Pitt)

As unlikely as his character is—an abolitionist in Louisiana, and a contrarian who everyone likes—Bass is drawn straight from the book’s account. His argument with Epps (“but begging the law’s pardon, it lies,” “There will be a reckoning yet”) is reproduced almost verbatim.

The real Bass, in fact, did more for Northup, sending multiple letters on his behalf, meeting with him in the middle of the night to hear his story, and—when they initially got no response from their letters—vowing to travel up to New York himself, to secure Northup’s freedom. The process took months, and Northup’s freedom eventually came from Bass’s first letter after all, so the movie understandably chooses to elide all this.

One of ILX's most hated film directors looks due for some awards!

You can say that again,

https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/steve-mcqueen-knighthood

Most hated title not in danger.

nobody in it was bad at all except maybe pitt, who isn't exactly a bad actor but just seems like someone who's unfamiliar with the act of talking

― goole, Monday, March 24, 2014 3:58 PM

I miss goole