12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

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jbeall
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#126 Post by jbeall » Sat Apr 05, 2014 12:01 am

I thought 12 Years a Slave was impressive, easily McQueen's best (and I count myself among the admirers of Hunger, though I intensely disliked Shame).

There's already a great deal of commentary more detailed than I'm able to give, but I want to suggest that instead of comparing McQueen's film to Django Unchained, there might be some profit in comparing it instead with one of its rivals for a handful of Oscars, Gravity. The primary complaint in this forum directed at Cuaron's film, IIRC, was the unnecessary backstory involving the protagonist's daughter, the argument being that it felt like an unnecessarily forced attempt to get viewers to identify with her personal struggle when in fact the immediate situation of her being alone in out space after a catastrophe was compelling enough.

I'll suggest here that the same is true of Solomon: I don't need to know that much about him to be intensely, even viscerally offended by the injustice of his situation at every stage along the way. The point is precisely about how awful slavery (and the illegal kidnapping that led to Northup's dozen years in slavery) is for anybody, not just for a standup dude such as Solomon. Were the film to foreground the plight as being specific to Solomon Northup, slavery begins to recede into the background. It's by keeping the awfulness of slavery firmly foregrounded, thanks in large part to the experiences of other slaves, that makes 12 Years a Slave so successful, imo.
Last edited by jbeall on Tue Aug 12, 2014 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

A.Hope
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#127 Post by A.Hope » Tue Jul 01, 2014 5:55 am

domino harvey wrote:Black Hat, I wrote earlier about this but I had the same problems with the protagonist's characterizations and that final scene as well, so you're not alone
I'm there with you too. I've studied Northup's story and the history surrounding fugitive slave laws so I wasn't surprised by any of the violence or suffering. What surprised me is that McQueen chose to depict Northup as being so stoic and resilient. The problem with the film is that it sticks too closely to the narrative, which was published for a Northern "liberal" white audience in 1853. The narrative is written in a way which aims to appeal to the sympathies of white liberals to garner support for the abolitionist movement. I had hoped that McQueen would have removed that layer of propaganda and made Northup's emotional well-being match that of his situation. As powerful as his "I will not fall into despair..." monologue is, it would have been better if there was an equally powerful scene of him giving in to despair. There are slight hints of this - struggling to write the letter, subsequently destroying the finished letter, singing along to River Jordon - but I felt like there was a key scene missing in this film.

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djproject
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#128 Post by djproject » Tue Oct 11, 2016 6:33 am

So ... when talking about The Birth of a Nation, I said it was a reminder of what 12 Years a Slave did right. Here is what I meant (and coincidentally, these were my initial thoughts when I first saw it in the theatres way back in late autumn of 2013.)

1) The film is based on a contemporary (for its time) slave narrative. Had this been an original story using material at the time, it would have been charged - by any camp - as "having an agenda" and especially since there has been 150+ years of additional commentary, thoughts, opinions, views, insights, etc. And had that approach been taken, not only would it have cluttered whatever story was told, but also it would have created needless controversy. And I think at this point, we needed (even back in 2013) an honest and straightforward look of what had happened in order to learn and understand what occurred and move on properly from there.

And I noticed mentions of an inherent bias for its time as this was written in part by an abolitionist, even though Solomon Northrop provided the testimony. That does not really bother me mostly because I think we are long past the point of debating whether slavery is an acceptable institution. Also, the film did not make a claim to be a definitive work about slavery in the United States; it was simply telling a story that happens to be a slave narrative. Finally, I think that there was enough nuance and humanity present. Even the callous and rentless Epps (either of them) has it. They just harbor a terrible and grossly perverse worldview.

(Although the great bonus is that this actually feels like it was from the 1840s/1850s. My pet peeve with most historically set dramas is the dialogue still feels contemporary to our time.)

2) The film was directed by someone who was not raised exclusively in America. Yes, Steve McQueen went to Tisch and resides in New York as well as Amsterdam. But I think the advantage of having someone who was not raised exclusively in America is you are closer to having an "objective view" of what had happened and you don't have the clutter of that (albeit briefly) aforementioned 150+ year commentary. In other words, he would not have to spend hours of discussion trying to justify his directorial decisions to anyone, especially to an American audience. He simply made the film he felt could be the most dramatically powerful and historically sound work he could without having to fulfill some unspoken obligation. If an American director took on this material - either white or black (remember Amistad?) - there would have been endless discussion at all stages and I think it would have resulted in a watered-down and compromised affair. I think it was the right move to be bold but honest and it paid off.

(As a reminder and an aside, Nate Parker was born in Norfolk, VA ... and thus he would have a hometown familiarity and attachment to the Nat Turner story. This also reminds me that I'm curious about William Styron's novel.)

Those were my thoughts on it.

Oh yeah, it would have been nice if Chiwetel Ejiofor had won the Academy Award for Best Actor
SpoilerShow
for it would have been the second time Paul Dano was beaten into the ground by a Best Actor winner in an historical American drama showcasing the worst aspects of humanity.

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TMDaines
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#129 Post by TMDaines » Thu Dec 13, 2018 9:43 am

My wife's upstairs watching this now. She's not seen the film and I've not seen it since release. I was going to join her whilst eating my lunch, but couldn't stomach the whipping scene again. I had to leave the room. I'm downstairs now just sobbing at the sheer noise of that scene. I can stomach and watch pretty much anything on film, but this one scene just goes right through me. it's so raw, so visceral, so cruel, so evil. I don't know anything else that affects me like that in all of cinema.

Anyone else find that one scene as powerful as I do?

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mfunk9786
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#130 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:05 pm

That was absolutely one of the most impactful moments for me on my first viewing, was worse the 2nd time, and I haven't gone back to this since. It's a film I remember very fondly, but I don't know if it's one that's really built to be revisited much.

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swo17
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#131 Post by swo17 » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:07 pm

By "worse" do you mean more harrowing or less impactful?

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mfunk9786
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#132 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:11 pm

More harrowing. It's a very difficult scene to watch, but particularly so when you know where (and how far) it's going.

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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#133 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:17 pm

I just re-watched the film for a second time this past summer, and that sequence remains breathtaking. I was watching it with a friend who had never seen it, and he was blown away — even more so when we talked after the fact about how long the take was. I think it's such a powerful a scene that it's easy to get so wound up in the emotions and drama of it that you don't fully recognize the technical prowess on display until a second viewing.

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Shrew
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Re: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

#134 Post by Shrew » Thu Dec 13, 2018 1:31 pm

When I saw the film in the theater, a woman two seats down from me was not only sobbing and trying to look away, but physically jerking her body away from the screen at each lash of the whip.

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