12 Years A Slave

My first experience with Steve McQueen (the director not the actor) was with a movie titled Shame that I saw nearly 2 years back during my trip down under.  I was a novice at reviewing (marginally better now) and didn’t quite take too kindly to the bold moves that McQueen confronted us with (http://kartikr.blogspot.in/2012/02/shame.html) and of course his favourite actor – Michael Fassbender.

Fassbender plays a pivotal role in 12 Years a Slave as well in the role of Edwin Epps.  One that has earned him several nominations for an actor in a supporting role – including one for Uncle Oscar.  That would be one amongst 9 nominations that this brilliant movie (to say the least) has earned.  While it has deserved each one of those nominations, I find it difficult to understand why some other really good movies were shunned.

We shall save that discussion for another day and time.  For now, lets restrict ourselves to the biopic (one reason why it has so many nominations is The Academy’s affinity to well made ones) of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an African American man from 1841 who gets kidnapped and sold as a slave to a New Orleans gentleman by the name of Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Ford would be the first of 3 masters that Northup would have over the next 12 years.  Unluckily for Northup, Ford would be the kindest one he would ever have.  While he gets the wrong end of the racist stick all through including an attempt at lynching that goes wrong but leaves him hanging by his neck from a tree thanks to a disagreement with his Head Carpenter – Tibeats (Paul Dano).

After this episode, he is sold off to his worst nightmare, and that of every nigger in the 1840s – Edwin Epps – a cotton farmer in New Orleans itself.  If Epps wasn’t bad enough, his wife (Sarah Paulson) is a terror – especially to Patsie (Lupita Nyong'o) who has Edwin’s favour for being brilliant at picking cotton.  But she has to face Mistress Epps’ wrath thanks to Edwin being unable to keep his family jewels in his pants.

No amount of crude writing from my side can do any justice to McQueen’s brilliant narration. It is only his 3^rd full length feature.  The first, Hunger (2008) created waves @ Cannes.  This may just take the cake @ The Oscars, come March 2^nd 2014.  The only glitch was maybe editing. I am not sure why Joe Walker has got a nomination here.  There is a big difference between 120 minutes and 132 when your movie unravels itself slowly with a lot of attention to detail.

There are 2 outstanding moments in the movie that will ironically make you look away from the screen. The first one is when Northup gets lynched by Tibeats and is left hanging.  The 2^nd is when Northup is forced to whip Patsie and Edwin takes over because he thinks that Northup isn’t doing a job that sets a high benchmark.

McQueen is as close to reality as you can get.  When someone is being whipped, you may not see whip getting into contact with skin but you do see a slight blood spray that makes you swallow hard.  The costumes are brilliantly done for the period in consideration and Patricia Norris has earned herself a deserved nomination.

Lupita Nyong'o’s screen time is bare minimum but she is outstanding in the most hard hitting scene in the movie where she begs Epps to believe that she was out to get soap and not for anything else.  Both Fassbender and Ejiofor are brilliant.  The latter, may not be a strong contender thanks to a certain Leo Di Caprio.

In all, a must watch this weekend.  The censor board has been kind enough to release this without cuts.  I therefore urge parents to avoid taking kids to the show because there is a lot of nudity and violence.  More importantly, it is a slow movie that is difficult to grasp even for an adult.  8.5 on 10 for certain.  Movie of the year? Maybe not in my books but the world seems to think otherwise.

Watch the trailer on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi302032921/?ref_=tt_ov_vi