12 Years a Slave

I’m sort of thinking about the US history. It wasn’t very joyous. And then I think about ours. But I’ll return to the US history and I can only say that people were real bastards in the past. I’m not saying that they’re not bastards nowadays, but what happened on the US territory during its colonization is just unparalleled. The land bought by the blood of Native Americans and then subsequently African Americans that the white men have brought in… that’s not exactly something you can brag about nowadays. And a very interesting British director Steve McQueen introduced one such chapter into a story that made me sick throughout the entirety of the movie. I almost didn’t make it till the ending. And I believe I can take a whole deal when it comes to movies now. But I guess I can’t, I haven’t seen a movie this heavy in a long time. Some of the scenes reeked of absolute despair, loss and sadness from each day spent on a cotton field. But the director filmed it really well. I won’t ever get some of the scenes from my mind. And not only because there were insane things happening, but also because the director has purposely filmed them to be lengthy, sometimes even silent. The ending itself is all-telling. And those actors? I don’t need to take a long time to talk about them. They all left such an impression on me. Not only the main African American ones, but also those portraying secondary characters, who had a whole array of famous names. (28/02/2014)

I sort of see parallels with today’s society in this and not an anti-racist fairytale with a happy ending, which they obviously seemed to want. McQueen has disappointed me for the first time, probably because he couldn’t be sufficiently detached from the topic and he forgot to spice it up with something. These torturous 12 years seem fairly relaxed and Platt doesn’t experience proper slavery until he’s with Fassbender, who is cutely eccentric and interprets the Word of the Lord in his own special way. And eventually he alone really deals out punishment. Chiwetel Ejiofor (how the heck do you pronounce that?) acts well, but he honestly doesn’t have that much to do and the nomination for an Oscar is a little bizarre. The concept of time passing was poorly intimated, it’s hard to tell how long he was where and if it wasn’t for the title and the granddaughter, it could have easily been like four years. Lifelessly filmed and if it weren’t for Fassbender, I just don’t know. Nothing exceptional, but it’s watchable. P.S.: Hans Zimmer sometimes shines, but the music is mostly pretty ordinary and the gospel overkill is just awful. I said dance! Come on! Get goin’, Platt! (24/01/2014)

I took the time to read a little more about the whole Solomon Northup thing. Right up to the moment when he is freed from slavery, it is a wonderful account of the American South before the Civil War. But why does the film end here? Because what happened later and how much information there is about it would not be as clear. It is no coincidence, after all, that the memoirs helped Northup write and publish it just a year after "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published. None of those involved in his abduction were punished. Northup himself disappears very soon after a brief tour to promote his cause and book. Given the kind of manifesto the film version of 12 Years a Slave was meant to be, it raises more questions, and it's not just about the pious parallel with today. Why all the acting orgies by Fassbender, Paulson, or Pitt? Nyong'o is only acting in the MCU these days anyway, so I'm not really feeling all that good about it. (30/01/2019)

Just like Zimmer recycles his music, McQueen here has recycled all of the movies about black slaves that have existed to this day. Honestly, this film has nothing unexpected or otherwise interesting. Ejiofor becomes a slave, is a slave for twelve years and then it’s no longer a slave. The end. I also had some problem with the time frame, it didn’t feel at all like it was twelve years, I actually felt that the story could’ve taken place in four years, or even less. But the execution is very good, without any excessive moralising or pathetic bullshit, so a pretty decent Oscar winner. BTW, the best performance is Fassbender’s, hands down, while Pitt surprisingly manages to annoy even in his short, almost cameo appearance. (05/01/2014)

I was afraid of self-poignant historical frescoes about a cohesive black community and ugly southern slaveholders, but I got a surprisingly bright and complex story of a man who will perhaps too quickly acquire a forced identity and live his 12 years not in chains, but in separation (from his family, but also from the "community" of Negro slaves). Like Tarantino a year ago, McQueen ticks off too-simple boxes and pleasing catharsis. Although the screenplay sometimes casts unnecessarily large words under his feet, but the narrative through images, the emphasis on ambiguous "looking" into the face of the protagonist and his companions, and the inner stratification of individual Lords keep him close to his central theme - lack of freedom, which is not the result of specific enslavement, but rather existence itself. In the end, we can come to the surprising discovery that more than anything, 12 Years a Slave is a film about the acceptance of someone else's identity and the traumatic loss of oneself. Hence the often mentioned passivity of the main character, which is in fact an essential part of his choice to survive even through the greatest compromises. More like Frantz Fanon than Steven Spielberg, the film is masterful and strong in the best moments, despite its imbalance. In the others, perhaps safely approaching conventions, it is still at least fascinating and worth thinking about. [85%] (10/01/2014)