Well. With
the Oscar® season now officially upon us with the nominations and the dates
set, what remains for us movie buffs is to discuss the nominees and put the
finishing touches to our own guesses as who this year’s little gold men will go
to. One cannot, of course, guess everything. But one thing seems pretty certain
from where I’m sitting, judging from all the discussion it has raised alone, 12
Years A Slave will be walking away with some awards on March the 2nd.
So, in my quest to get up to date with the Oscar ®buzz this year, this is where
I started.
I just want
to add a quick parenthesis here and add: Man, I missed actually going to the
cinema! Watching films from home is just so easy these days thanks to various
different platforms enabled by 21st century technology. I have, in
the process discovered one of my favourite cinemas to date : The Screen On the
Green in Angel. I loved the “double seaters” complete with little foot stools
for couples, the café / bar INSIDE the screening room itself and the fact that
the toilets led straight off the screening room itself – allowing one to nip in
and out quickly and discretely J I know I digress but just… The whole
experience was great. I mean sure, the film would not be any less great if I
had watched it at home in my jammies but… The whole experience was awesome.
Seriously. Look up your local independent cinema. Go to it more often. You’ll
be pleasantly surprised; especially if, like me, you’re lucky enough to be able
to go during “office hours”.
But I
digress. The film. Quite. Now, you probably have, if nothing a vague idea of
what goes on in the film. But let me quickly go through it anyway. Solomon
Northup was an accomplished violin player who lived in New York in the mid-19th
century. He was a black man, but a free man as he was lucky enough to be born
in “the north”. And he was living a quiet life with his family, his beloved
wife and 2 small children until a business deal that seems almost too good to
be true has an unexpected… Backlash… Kidnapped, taken south and sold into
slavery, Solomon has to wait 12 years before any real hope of salvation comes
his way. In the meanwhile, through his memoires, we follow him move from master
to master, plantation to plantation and fight to keep his sanity… And his life…
Steve
McQueen and script writer John Ridley use Northup’s autobiography to cast an
unblinking gaze on the utter horrors of slavery in the 19th century.
Northup is passed on from pillar to post much like a piece of furniture and
virtually no consideration for even his most basic need and comforts. Once on
the market, the rest is purely pot – luck. You could end up with a kind and
fair master like Ford (Benedict Cumbarbach – incidentally I was so sure for
some reason he would be the “mean” master; I think he would make an excellent
villain. Oh well. That’s for another film I guess). But even so you had no
guarantee that the overseers you were made to work under would be just as kind.
Paul Dano is beyond brilliant as Tibeats, Ford’s overseer. Tibeats is a typical,
small-minded and mean middle-management figure. You know the type. That
particularly mean boss who always has plenty of snide comments but no
constructive criticism on your work. The one who is on the lookout to chip off your
breaks and benefits whenever he can. Yeah. Except Tibeats can actually kill the
people he is overseeing and get away with it. But then… Then he is moved on to
Epps (Michael Fassbinder). We, along with poor Solomon, thought Tibeats was
bad. Suffice it to say compared to Epps, he is a fluffy kitten with a bow round
its neck. But I will let you discover the delightful Master Epps and the way he
runs his plantation in your own good time.
12 years a
slave will, without a shadow of a doubt, grab you by the gut and not let go
until 2 and whatever hours later. I defy you not to cry. Hand on heart, even
the slightly “Deus ex machine” ending of the film completely eclipses your
attention (I will get to this in a second). At this point, I have actually read
reviews that criticise the film, and if not the film, the fact that there is
not enough intellectual involvement in films like this and that the "tear jerker" nature of the film is a bit of an "easy way out" (Click here for a particularly fine
example of this school of thought). I mean, there is some truth in this. I will
fully admit that even as I sat in the dark crying my eyes out, I knew exactly
what was coming in the end and I loved the fact that I was right. And that is
not the mindset of an “intellectually engaged” critic of the movie. Lets get back to the Deus ex Machina bit. I mean, ok,
I do get that it would take a large dose of chance for Northup to get out of
the condition he was in. But still… A chance encounter with a stranger (I’m
talking about Brad Pitt’s character) and “puff”, 12 years of agony at an end… It would possibly be more realistic if, instead
of – or possibly after – his reunion with his family, we at least saw something
of his struggle in the courts and his ultimate failure to prosecute anyone who
had harmed him. But no, the emotional reunion with his family is the end of the
film and Northup’s later struggles are only seen in writing on a black screen
just before the credits. I mean yes, add all those in too and we’d have a film
3,5 hours long… But would it maybe push us to think more about the political
system of the time? One of the reasons Northup couldn’t have justice is the
fact that the colour of his skin prevented him from testifying against a white
man. Another fact that potentially gets washed away in our floods of tears at
the finale.
So. I’m
landing on the side that argues that 12 Years a Slave should be less emotional
and more intellectual, is that it? Well… That leads me to another question
though. Is it the obligatory function of all art to make us think and nothing else? Ah, now
there’s a discussion for you. I would argue, no. Sure, art has a duty to
educate the masses if nothing else by using the power that comes of being so “widely
spread”. But it has another function. To make us feel. Art is primarily an
emotional creature and from there springs its beauty; if art didn’t make us
feel passionate and involved, if it didn’t sweep us off our feet from time to
time, well… All art would be like those French films that are “meant” to make
you feel disengaged and give “useful” messages. And we all know how popular
those are.
So maybe 12
Years A Slave is more emotional than intellectual. Why is this a bad thing? In
a world where racism is a sadly common occurrence, it gives a plain message. A
message that we clearly needed reminding, seeing that racism is as common as it
is: “Racism is a terrible thing”. “Slavery is a terrible thing” and before
anything yes there still are people working in conditions approaching slavery, if
not the actual thing, in this funny old world of ours. If we don’t have any “actual”
messages, well maybe it’s because we haven’t come that far yet, so to speak.
Once we can fully grasp that we should treat each other with equal respect regardless
of race, sex, colour and creed we can move onto the complicated stuff… In the meanwhile though, 12 Years a Slave
shouts out its message loud and clear. And you should really, really stop and
listen if you haven’t already.
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