12 Years a Slave

Steve McQueen: 12 Years a Slave (2013) with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup.

Illustration from: Solomon Northup: Twelve Years a Slave (1855 edition). Photo: Wikipedia.

12 Years a Slave [Finnish theatrical title] / 12 vuotta orjana [Finnish tv title].
    US © 2013 Regency Entertainment (USA) Inc. and Bass Flims, LLC in the US. © 2013 Bass Films, LLC and Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l. in the rest of the world. P: Dede Gardner, Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, Arnon Milchan, Brad Pitt, Bill Pohlad.
    D: Steve McQueen. SC: John Ridley. Based on the memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853) by Solomon Northup. DP: Sean Bobbitt – negative: 35 mm – source format: Super 35 – master format: digital intermediate 2K – colour – 2,35:1 – released on 35 mm and D-Cinema. PD: Adam Stockhausen. AD: David Stein. Set dec: Alice Baker. Cost: Patricia Norris. Makeup: Ma Kalaadevi Ananda. Hair: Adruitha Lee. VFX: Wildfire Post NOLA. VFX: Crafty Apes. M: Hans Zimmer. S: Ryan Collins, Robert Jackson. ED: Joe Walker.
    C (Wikipedia): Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup / Platt
    Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps
    Lupita Nyong'o as Patsey
    Sarah Paulson as Mary Epps
    Paul Dano as John Tibeats
    Benedict Cumberbatch as William Ford
    Alfre Woodard as Mistress Harriet Shaw
    Brad Pitt as Samuel Bass
    Adepero Oduye as Eliza
    Garret Dillahunt as Armsby
    Scoot McNairy as Merrill Brown
    Taran Killam as Abram Hamilton
    Christopher Berry as James H. Burch
    Chris Chalk as Clemens Ray
    Rob Steinberg as Mr. Parker
    Paul Giamatti as Theophilus Freeman
    Michael K. Williams as Robert
    Bryan Batt as Judge Turner
    Bill Camp as Ebenezer Radburn
    Tom Proctor as Biddee
    Jay Huguley as Sheriff
    Storm Reid as Emily
    Quvenzhané Wallis as Margaret Northup
    Dwight Henry as Uncle Abram
    Loc: Louisiana*, USA, 25 June – 13 Aug 2012.
(*New Orleans, and four antebellum plantations: Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan and Magnolia).
    3684 m / 134 min
    Festival premiere: 30 Aug 2013 Telluride Film Festival.
    US general release: 8 Nov 2013
    Finnish premiere: 24 Jan 2014
    Corona lockdown viewings / Black Lives Matter.
    From the C More platform with Finnish subtitles by Janne Mökkönen.
    Viewed at a forest retreat in Punkaharju on a tv screen, 25 July 2020.

AA: Only now I see Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, one of the most acclaimed films of the last decade and the most influential slave narrative of our time. It is based on the first-hand account of Solomon Northup as told to David Wilson. McQueen compares it with Anne Frank's Diary as a depiction of the Holocaust. The crimes involved are so overwhelming that they are hard to describe, but a first person singular account can help us get into the heart of the matter.

The production values are excellent in this historical epic. The story is engrossing, contrasting the way of life in free New York with slaveholding Louisiana. The approach is graphic, with justification. It is hard to forget the punishment of Solomon Northup by letting him hang on tiptoes. Or the brutal whipping of Patsey, adding insult to the injury by ordering Solomon to be the whipper (he does so, but he also helps save her life).

The account of verbal violence is also powerful. A terrifying highlight is the slaveholders' vicious anthem "Run Nigger Run".

Steve McQueen's vision is profoundly philosophical, and it is also relevant to Hegel's dialectic of the master and the slave: every sequence bears witness to the insight that where there is slavery, nobody can be free. The best must be crushed because no slave can seem better than the master. The most beautiful must be maimed. Families are destroyed to ensure sole dependence on the owner.

The most acclaimed tale of slavery until the 1920s was Uncle Tom's Cabin. One of the handful of the most powerful books in history, written by "the little lady who started the great war", as Lincoln reportedly said, it has fallen out of favour because of the stereotype of "Uncle Tomism", but I doubt that the detractors have ever read the novel. The books share much of the same ground, and it is illuminating to compare the most inflammatory scene in both. Tom refuses to whip a fellow black slave guy on the cotton field, and as a matter of restoration of discipline, Simon Legree has Tom whipped to death. In my books, Tom displays the greatest dignity and bravery. He dies, but he becomes immortal.

Steve McQueen has directed an unforgettable film. The subject-matter is harrowing, and the director displays a great sense of tact and proportion. I am currently listening to Beethoven's piano sonatas and have reached the year 1801 when the composer became a master of the pedal. Steve McQueen is also kept ultra busy with his set of pedals at his grand piano: the damper, the sostenuto and the soft pedal.

I cannot claim that he succeeds, nor that he fails. The subject-matter exceeds so many faculties of our spirit, and the magnitude of the crime committed is so manifold that the very failure has an aesthetic impact, comparable with a soul singer like James Brown who tries to convey the ultimate passion or suffering and gets out of breath but still manages to take us to the stratosphere.

The film is not full of life. It is often curiously lukewarm although the story is inflammatory. I'm happy about the full colour in the 35 mm photochemical cinematography. Typically for our times, the film is overlong, with scenes needlessly prolonged, as if an expensive prestige film must be prolonged. Most curious is the lack of fire in musical performances. The score written for the film has a regular syrupy dragging quality.

Nevertheless, this film is unforgettable.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SOUNDTRACK CREDITS (IMDB) AND PLOT (WIKIPEDIA):
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SOUNDTRACK CREDITS (IMDB) AND PLOT (WIKIPEDIA):

IMDb: Soundtrack Credits

My Lord, Sunshine
Written by Nicholas Britell
Performed by Roosevelt Credit and David Hughey

The Devil's Dream
Arranged by Nicholas Britell and Tim Fain
Performed by Tim Fain

Trio in B-flat, D471
Written by Franz Schubert
Arranged by Nicholas Britell and Tim Fain
Performed by Tim Fain and Caitlin Sullivan

The Old Promenade
Written by Nicholas Britell
Performed by Tim Fain

Money Musk
Arranged by Nicholas Britell and Tim Fain
Performed by Tim Fain

Run Nigger Run
Collected, Adapted, and Arranged by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax
Performed by Paul Dano (uncredited)

Awake on Foreign Shores
Written and Performed by Colin Stetson
Courtesy of Constellation
By Arrangement with Third Side Music Inc.

Apache Blessing Song
Written and Performed by Chesley Wilson

Cotton Song
Written by Nicholas Britell

Miller's Reel
Arranged by Nicholas Britell and Tim Fain
Performed by Tim Fain

Yarney's Waltz
Written by Nicholas Britell
Performed by Tim Fain and Caitlin Sullivan

O Teach Me Lord
Written by Nicholas Britell
Performed by Tami Tyree, Roosevelt Credit, David Hughey, and Dan'yelle Williamson

John
Written by John Davis

Roll Jordan Roll
Written by Nicholas Britell
Performed by Topsy Chapman (uncredited) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (uncredited)

WIKIPEDIA: PLOT:

Solomon Northup is a free African-American man in 1841, working as a violinist and living with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician if he will travel with them to Washington, D.C.; however, once they have arrived, they drug Northup and deliver him to a slave pen run by a man named Burch. Northup proclaims that he is a free man, only to be savagely beaten with a wooden paddle and then a leather strap.

Northup is shipped to New Orleans along with other captive African-Americans. He is told by the others that if he wants to survive in the South, he must adapt to being a slave and not tell anyone he is a free man. A slave trader named Theophilus Freeman gives Northup the identity of "Platt", a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him to plantation owner William Ford. Ford takes a liking to Northup and gives him a violin. A growing tension between Northup and plantation carpenter John Tibeats finally breaks as Tibeats tries to beat Northup. Northup snaps and beats Tibeats with his hands before beating him with his own whip. Tibeats and his group try to hang Northup, but they are not successful. Northup is left on tiptoes with the noose around his neck for hours before Ford arrives and cuts Northup down. To save Northup's life, Ford sells him to another slave owner named Edwin Epps. In the process, Northup attempts to explain that he is actually a free man, but Ford tells him he is too afraid and that he cannot help him.

Epps, unlike Ford, is ruthless and sadistic. Northup meets Patsey, a favored slave who can pick over 500 pounds of cotton a day, twice the usual quota. Epps regularly rapes Patsey while his wife abuses and humiliates her out of jealousy. Some time later, cotton worms destroy Epps's crops. Unable to work his fields, Epps leases his slaves to a neighboring plantation for the season. While there, Northup gains the favor of the plantation's owner, Judge Turner, who allows him to play the fiddle at a neighbor's wedding anniversary celebration and to keep his earnings. When Northup returns to Epps, he uses the money to pay a white field hand and former overseer, Armsby, to mail a letter to his friends in New York. Armsby agrees and accepts Northup's saved money, but immediately betrays him to Epps. In the middle of the night, a drunken Epps wakes Northup and questions him menacingly about the letter while holding a knife to Northup's stomach. Northup is narrowly able to convince Epps that Armsby is lying and Epps relents. Afterwards, Northup mournfully burns the letter to prevent Epps from finding it. Some time later, Patsey is caught by Epps going to a neighboring plantation in order to acquire soap, as Mrs. Epps won't let her have any. In retaliation, Epps orders Northup to whip Patsey. Patsey is then whipped brutally by Epps, to the point of near death. After the incident, Northup destroys his violin in a rage.

Northup begins working on the construction of a gazebo with a Canadian laborer named Samuel Bass. Bass is unsettled by the brutal way that Epps treats his slaves and expresses his opposition to slavery, earning Epps's enmity. Northup overhears the conversation and decides to reveal his kidnapping to Bass. Once again, Northup asks for help in getting a letter to New York. Although Bass is hesitant at first because of the risks, he agrees to send it. One day, the local sheriff arrives in a carriage with two men. The sheriff asks Northup a series of questions to confirm that his answers match the facts of his life in New York. Northup recognizes the sheriff's companion as Mr. Parker, a shopkeeper he knew in Saratoga Springs. Parker has come to free him, and the two embrace, though an enraged Epps furiously protests the circumstances and tries to prevent Northup from leaving. Northup gives an emotional farewell to Patsey and rides off to his freedom.

Northup is returned to his home and family, crying as he walks up the steps. As he walks in, he sees his wife with their fully grown son and daughter, and his daughter's husband, who present him with his grandson and namesake, Solomon Northup Staunton. Northup tearfully apologizes for his long absence while his family comforts him. The film's epilogue titles recount: Northup's unsuccessful suits against Brown, Hamilton, and Burch; the 1853 publication of Northup's slave narrative memoir, Twelve Years a Slave; describes his role in the abolitionist movement; and the absence of any information surrounding the details of his death and burial.