Review of 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
Culture
Review: '12 Years a Slave'
Intensity reigns in Oscar frontrunner
• Oct 18, 2013 5:00 am
Reports circulated this week that Oscar voters take been reluctant to see 12 Years a Slave, the harrowing delineation of Solomon Northup's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) kidnapping and enslavement in 1841.
Despite its status as an firsthand frontrunner for best motion picture—a status it deserves—Hollywood insiders reported that the official Academy of Move Pictures Arts and Sciences screening was only half full. Compare that to Gravity, which was packed to the rafters. While the reports were disappointing to backers of 12 Years a Slave, they shouldn't be surprising. The film is equally as brutal as we've heard.
The film opens with Northup'due south married woman and children leaving town for a few weeks. With time to kill, Northup is convinced by a pair of traveling performers to join them in Washington, D.C., where he volition exist paid handsomely for his little skills. Their business complete, the trio goes out for a overnice dinner, replete with good vino—vino that has been drugged.
Northup awakes in bondage, and his 12-year nightmare begins. Commencement he must be broken: A pair of slavers viciously beat him with a wooden paddle, so scourge him with a leather whip, until Northup "admits" to being a slave. He is stripped naked and forced to wash in front of others. In a sort of reverse Hush-hush Railroad, he and a gaggle of other newly minted slaves are rushed southward of town in the cover of darkness.
From here the film descends into a cavalcade of horrors. Families are split autonomously at slave auctions, children wailing for their mothers. Fell overseers take the lash to recalcitrant chattel. Fifty-fifty "good" owners such as Chief Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) fail to run into Northup as much more than property to exist traded from possessor to possessor.
Northup winds up at the plantation of one Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a sadistic drunk fond of raping his slaves and whipping those who pick less cotton one 24-hour interval than the next. It is here that Northup's desire to survive meets its harshest test—and where he finds salvation.
Director Steve McQueen wraps the film in a cloak of brutality, dehumanizing Northup and his fellow slaves and forcing the states to sentinel the process take place bit by flake.
The camera lingers on misery. At one point, Northup is almost to be lynched—he struck an overseer who was unhappy with his work—before the activeness is stopped past another overseer who doesn't want to see the master's belongings damaged. Nosotros recall the overseer is, if not a practiced man, at least a decent one: He tells Northup that if he runs from the property, he can't protect him, and puts a stop to the hanging at the last possible moment, the once-complimentary-human being's toes just touching the ground as the noose stretches his cervix.
And and so the overseer walks abroad. Northup may not deserve to die, merely he does need to be taught a lesson.
The camera stays still. Northup struggles for air; he's almost, only not quite, choking to death. The shot goes on for fifteen seconds. Thirty. 40. Xl-5. Life returns to normal behind Solomon as slaves go nigh their business. But the camera remains locked in identify, tension mounting. A slave brings Northup water (which he greedily drinks) and flees when she draws the attending of whites. The sunday sets and finally, mercifully, Master Ford shows up to cutting Northup down and end his torment.
It is difficult to watch, a lesson in cruelty and in the degrading nature of slavery. 12 Years a Slave frequently feels similar a catalogue of such lessons, and this is its biggest weakness. Northup'due south struggle for survival seems similar little more than window dressing, a narrative tool that allows the writer and managing director to delve into the horrors of slavery.
The quality of the performances keeps the eye riveted to the screen despite our revulsions. Ejiofor gets his chance to smoothen later a decade of stiff, if limited, supporting roles. Fassbender's plough as Epps is terrifying. A special mention goes to Lupita Nyong'o, whose Patsey is the object of Epps's "affection." One feels as if she deserves a special award this Oscar season for "near psychically traumatic role."
12 Years a Slave is more of an important moving-picture show than a swell one. It is a searing portrait of a night time and of a terrible practice that nonetheless may leave some audition members feeling somewhat cold.
Source: https://freebeacon.com/culture/review-12-years-a-slave/
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