Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave takes us into the ferocious maw of slavery in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War. Based on a true story, it recounts the bitter experiences of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free African American who was drugged, kidnapped and sold into bondage.
This unadorned, unaffected and troubling movie gives viewers a keen insight into the deep-seated racism that infected American society in the mid-19th century, as well as a glimpse of what some historians have described as that “peculiar institution.“
In the first emblematic scene, a slave master instructs a group of black men to harvest sugar cane. It’s back-breaking work, but that’s what slaves are for in the southern United States.
The film backtracks to Saratoga, a quaint town in upper New York state where Solomon and his family enjoy peaceful lives. An accomplished fiddle player, Solomon accepts a brief gig in Washington, D.C, only to find himself in chains in a dark dungeon.
“You’re just a run away nigger,” his callous jailer claims. “A slave.”
Transported to a slave market in New Orleans, Solomon is sold to Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), a Louisiana plantation owner with a smidgeon of compassion. At the market, black people are treated like chattel. Some of them are stark naked as they submissively submit to body inspections.
As a dealer escorts a prospective buyer around the premises, he shouts, “What catches your fancy?” “A nigger of considerable talent!” And standing next to a boy, he says, “He will grow into a fine beast.” No one, of course, cares when a slave, a mother, wails in sorrow after being separated from her children.
McQueen correctly regards slavery as an ugly facet of the antebellum economy. In the southern states, slavery is property, an essential cog in the oppressive and profitable machinery of capitalist exploitation.
On Ford`s plantation, Solomon is treated relatively decently because he`s a good worker, a person who accommodates himself to a bad situation. Ford, an intelligent man, recognizes his qualities, and rewards him with a fiddle after Solomon finds a way of cutting costs.
But after Ford sells Solomon to Epps (Michael Fassbinder), life becomes infinitely harder. Apart from being a sexual predator who preys on one of the young black women on his place, he`s simply a brute. After Solomon gets into an altercation with a vicious overseer, he is left hanging on a rope, his feet barely touching the ground. Hours seem to pass before Epps finally bothers to relieve Solomon of his agony.
Brad Pitt makes an appearance as a decent Canadian who rails against slavery, shows kindness toward Solomon and agrees to help him break out of the shackles of his enslavement. Strangely enough, Pitt speaks with a heavy southern accent.
Exuding intelligence, strength and dignity, Ejiofor holds the picture together magnificently. Fassbinder, his foil, is a study in volcanic temperament.
More than two hours in length, 12 Years A Slave unfolds in slow, meandering fashion, with long bouts of earnest dialogue and fleeting bursts of brutality and violence.
This film reminds us of a time when the United States was a democracy in name only.