Throughout cinematic history, there's been an undeniable race problem that's run deep in Hollywood filmmaking, particularly when tackling the subject of slavery. The grand global practice whose currents throughout America still run with a trepidation, a fear and a tremendous supply of guilt; it would be difficult if nearly impossible not to impose some kind of sermon. In that respect, the immense impression of brute honesty, violence and degradation on display in director Steve McQueen's impeccably made
12 Years a Slave does more than a solid, it provides a lulling and masterful refrain to decades of Hollywood glossing over an aspect of a repugnant period in American history. More so than anecdote to the Hollywood treatment (expressed from
Gone With the Wind to last years'
Django Unchained), McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley have adapted the amazing-purely-for-the-sake-that-it-exists first person novel written by it's real-life protagonist, one Solomon Northup, and made a searingly truthful, lived-in account of the horrors of slavery. And if the utter and intentional lack of Hollywood spectacle and overt emotional manipulation marks the film a bit cold, a bit emotionally detached in the end, it's still remains an essential film merely for existing in the first place.
The film chronicles the titular hell of Solomon, a free black man in 1841. He lives a quietly dignified life with his wife and two children, a gifted musician and educated in scholarly ways that were rarely afforded in that time period. When a job opportunity arises for a circus show, Solomon finds himself shackled and shipped off to become a slave after a night of carousing and celebratory libations. From the start,
12 Years a Slave shows itself to be a film unafraid to show the brutal honesty of the period and the film charts Solomon's course with a clear-eyed intensity that's becomes more and more terse as the audience continues down his path. Solomon is played with an unerring dignity by Chiwetel Ejiofor in a subdued but tremendously alert performance. The British-born actor has always been a strikingly alive performer on screen and if nothing more, this film should hopefully bolster his career outside the marginalized supporting parts he's skillfully but thanklessly played in recent years. The immense integrity that Ejiofor hold at once strikes a committed chord, even as his character proves more to be an observer.
