12 Years a Slave (15.)
Directed by Steve McQueen.
Chewitel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano and Brad Pitt. 135 mins
While criticising Tarantino’s Django Unchained Spike Lee said "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust." Whatever the historical outrage, if enough books, films and plays are made about it eventually it becomes less of an incompressible moral affront and more of a digestible melodrama, a distant cautionary tale. The achievement of 12 Years A Slave is that it claws away the century and a half of fine words, noble suffering and black hearted villainy to reveal the raw and excruciating pain beneath.
Its story is simple and self-explanatory. Solomon Northrup (Ejiofor) is a free man, married with two children, living in New York in the 1840s who is abducted, taken to the South and sold into slavery. The drama is bluntly delineated. Northrup is a figure of pure good - smart, educated, compassionate and proud. His eventual master Epps (Fassbender) is pure evil – vicious, sadistic, hypocritical and ignorant. Half a century ago it would have been Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.
What prevents this being some preachy, worthy (and thus worthless) melodrama; what makes it something vital and thrilling, is that Steve McQueen is a true film artist. Like his debut feature Hunger it operates in the middle ground between his background as a Turner prize winning video artist and conventional narrative cinema. The economy of his storytelling is striking – the nightmare of the steamboat journey south is conveyed with a close up of a churning steamboat paddle, a few dark interior scenes and some percussive noise. (This economy extends to Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack which is largely bits of his Inception score; well, it is one of the best movie scores of recent years.)
Of course you suspect that his style is in part forced by budgetary restraints but you don’t dwell on what you are not getting, because what you do get is pinpoint precise. His framing is immaculate, knowing exactly what needs to go onto that screen. It helps that he has performer as inspired as Ejiofor to point his camera at. How does Chewitel do it? His bulging eyes and quivering lips are formidable weapons, place him in front of a camera and he will invariably give you something extraordinary and often without the need for any dialogue.
Directed by Steve McQueen.
Chewitel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano and Brad Pitt. 135 mins
While criticising Tarantino’s Django Unchained Spike Lee said "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust." Whatever the historical outrage, if enough books, films and plays are made about it eventually it becomes less of an incompressible moral affront and more of a digestible melodrama, a distant cautionary tale. The achievement of 12 Years A Slave is that it claws away the century and a half of fine words, noble suffering and black hearted villainy to reveal the raw and excruciating pain beneath.
Its story is simple and self-explanatory. Solomon Northrup (Ejiofor) is a free man, married with two children, living in New York in the 1840s who is abducted, taken to the South and sold into slavery. The drama is bluntly delineated. Northrup is a figure of pure good - smart, educated, compassionate and proud. His eventual master Epps (Fassbender) is pure evil – vicious, sadistic, hypocritical and ignorant. Half a century ago it would have been Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.
What prevents this being some preachy, worthy (and thus worthless) melodrama; what makes it something vital and thrilling, is that Steve McQueen is a true film artist. Like his debut feature Hunger it operates in the middle ground between his background as a Turner prize winning video artist and conventional narrative cinema. The economy of his storytelling is striking – the nightmare of the steamboat journey south is conveyed with a close up of a churning steamboat paddle, a few dark interior scenes and some percussive noise. (This economy extends to Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack which is largely bits of his Inception score; well, it is one of the best movie scores of recent years.)
Of course you suspect that his style is in part forced by budgetary restraints but you don’t dwell on what you are not getting, because what you do get is pinpoint precise. His framing is immaculate, knowing exactly what needs to go onto that screen. It helps that he has performer as inspired as Ejiofor to point his camera at. How does Chewitel do it? His bulging eyes and quivering lips are formidable weapons, place him in front of a camera and he will invariably give you something extraordinary and often without the need for any dialogue.
