Based on a true story, 12 Years a Slave is a powerful indictment of slavery. It depicts how the brutal system drained humanity from everyone it touched. It degraded people, made them moral quandaries and robbed families of their legacy.
The film features Michael Fassbender in one of his best performances. He plays a cruel plantation owner named Epps. Lupita Nyong’o also gives a standout performance as Patsey.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame) has given the film a clear-eyed, unsentimental quality that serves as a colossal gut punch. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a powerhouse in his role as Solomon Northup, a violin player who was kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery. He carries the role with precise wordless expressions, allowing his eyes and clench of his teeth to convey all that is right or wrong. His restrained openness and translucent performance gives the gomovies film a sense of stability, particularly during its frenzies of violence.
12 Years a Slave is an important and disturbing movie that should be seen by everyone. Its focus is not just on the horror of slavery but on how it affected the people who profited from it. While movies like Gone with the Wind and Lincoln only scratch the surface, this film reveals the banal evil of slavery that seeped into souls and bound bodies. It is a powerful film that deserves the accolades it has received. It features an outstanding cast, including Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt and Lupita Nyong’o.
Michael Fassbender
Director Steve McQueen, a visual artist who made a bumpy transition to filmmaking with the arty “Hunger” and “Shame,” demonstrates mastery here of the art of turning history into cinematic drama. Speeches are few, and sound and image predominate. Even the inexorable churning of a paddleboat sloshing through Louisiana waters is infused with a rare beauty, which suggests that slavery can produce its own form of hell.
Platt, now renamed a generic slave name, changes owners three times before being sold to cotton plantation owner and self-proclaimed “nigger breaker” Epps (Michael Fassbender). It is here that 12 Years a Slave deepens and hardens, as we watch a monster brutalize his slaves, including Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), who begs him to drown her.
Fassbender, with his skittish, spider-like frame and curled intensity, is a force of nature here. He’s alternately fascinating in his slothful narcissism and frightening for the lightning quick otherworldly killing capabilities that seem to lurk within his frame. He’s the closest thing to a human leopard we’ve seen on screen. He deservedly won the Best Actor Oscar.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Cumberbatch has long maintained a diverse career in theater and film, but he has found his niche on the big screen with roles in Stephen Hawking’s television movie Hawking (2004), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and 12 Years a Slave (2013). He has also been a regular in the hit BBC series Sherlock.
Like McQueen’s previous works, this one avoids the pitfalls of historical exploitation and tries to present slavery in a new light. Speeches are few and far between, with imagery and sound used to convey the world and its people rather than overtly explain it to the audience. An early scene in which Solomon is beaten to submission while his screams are shouted into the skies of Washington is a stunning demonstration of this approach.
While some may find Louis’ obsession with cat drawings and his general Sheldon Cooper-esque lack of social grace cringe worthy, Cumberbatch’s layered performance is a thing of beauty, opening the film up to both empathy and repulsion. Whether he’s whimpering in pain or stoically accepting his fate, there is never a moment when the actor loses control of the material.
Adepero Oduye
Just like Schindler’s List made the horrors of the Holocaust tangible, 12 Years a Slave brings slavery to awful, crushing life. It reveals how even a free man — in this case Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is rebranded “Platt” the moment he is shackled and forced onto a slave ship — can have his identity stripped away and be relegated to being nothing but a worker.
While there is no shortage of brutality, it’s the cruelty that the slaves inflict on one another that is most depressing. The beatings are numerous, the whippings frequent, and the scenes of rapes abound. A scene in which Patsey cries out for Northup to end her suffering is especially gut wrenching, a scene heightened by McQueen’s deliberate camera movement.
Screenwriting can only do so much, though, and 12 Years a Slave’s powerful performances — led by Ejiofor, as well as McQueen collaborators Fassbender and Cumberbatch and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o — carry the weight of this film. Even a brutal scene of mother Eliza (Adepero Oduye) being torn from her children lands with an emotional slap.
Sarah Paulson
After the disappointment of last year’s Django Unchained, a racial drama with a similar premise, Steve McQueen has returned with 12 Years a Slave. The film is a thundering work of compassionate art that’s equal parts a history lesson and a cinematic gut punch. It’s an argument about slavery that doesn’t settle for lovable masters or cheerful slaves and that demolishes the system’s canards, myths and cherished symbols.
While there are hints of comedy, the performances — especially Paulson’s and Lupita Nyong’o’s as the sour, shrewish Patsy and Diane — are straight-faced. This allows the movie to convey the depths of the characters’ villainy without being over-the-top or cartoonish. That’s important, as the film’s depiction of the violent and toxic enmeshment of slavery is based on a brutality that must be seen to be believed. It’s a depiction that’s made all the more potent by an invigorating performance by Paulson. She’s a sinister, menacing presence who delivers her lines with such force and conviction that they’re hard to ignore. It’s a performance that’s worthy of the Oscar buzz.