Review: "12 Years a Slave"

Director: Steve McQueen
Runtime: 133 minutes

When a movie has you doubting its quality for its first half hour, it tends to send up more than a few red flags. That was the experience I had with Steve McQueen's third feature film, 12 Years a Slave. All of the festival hype about this being a masterpiece didn't even seem remotely present. Yet over the course of its grueling duration, the movie has a way of getting under your skin long before you fully realize it. This is a film that rights itself so powerfully that it manages to meet, and possibly surpass, its overwhelming hype.

Arriving nearly a year after Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, Slave is quick to position itself as a polar opposite. Tarantino's take on slavery was brutal, but so stylized that it quickly arrived at winking hyperbole. That tongue-in-cheek revisionism is nowhere to be found in McQueen's film, which sternly cements itself as one of the definitive cinematic portraits of the horrors of American slavery. 

Yet for all of the brutality, emotional and physical, on display, 12 Years a Slave's approach is remarkably restrained. McQueen, working off of John Ridley's adaptation of the novel of the same title, has ample opportunity to bludgeon the viewer into numbing submission. As we follow Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man captured and sold into the southern slavery machine, we are witness to unspeakable violence, as expected. But rather than reflect Northrup's own horror, the film spends most of its time depicting its atrocities with quiet detachment. Rarely has the concept of the banality of evil been so maturely transferred to the silver screen.

The effect is distancing at first, and it can make 12 Years a Slave difficult to fully engage with at times. There are moments made to elicit gasps of horror, but also any number of scenes presented so matter-of-factly that they appear determined to keep the viewer at arm's length. It's a strategy that could have proved damning in the long run. Instead, it all builds to a finale that packs what has to be the biggest emotional wallop of the year, and by quite a wide margin. 

The academically rigorous treatment that takes up most of the runtime is, secretly, the key to the film's success. By refusing to indulge in exploitation and wallowing in awfulness, the story clips along, capturing evil as ordinarily as possible, as though it were just another part of the day. The intelligence with which Ridley treats his characters, coupled with McQueen's vision, allow the film to work as an accessibly arty drama, as well as an honest and unflinching portrait of one of the biggest travesties in American history.  

And as the glue holding the story together, Mr. Ejiofor is tremendous, infusing Solomon with hope, determination, and despair without mugging. The middle of the story sees Solomon - with a new name, and reduced to little more than a cotton picker - as an observer and occasional victim. Rather than slip into laziness, Ejiofor infuses Solomon's defeated passivity with a tragic grace that only becomes more impressive as time passes. 

While Ejiofor carries the movie on his shoulders, he allows his co-stars the bulk of the film's flashier moments. As Mr. and Mrs. Epps, Michael Fassbender and Sarah Paulson make up one of the most despicable, yet frighteningly believable, couples in recent memory. Whatever their quarrels with each other, they have no problem abusing and manipulating the slaves as a means of attacking each other. As Mr. Epps watches, with mocking delight, his slaves dance, his wife catches him eyeing young Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o, also excellent). Her retaliation is to pick up a glass decanter and toss it at the girl's head, with all of the effort of tossing paper into a waste bin. It's a moment horrifying for its basic cruelty, the chillingly casual manner of its depiction, and implications it has about the Epps' worldviews. That the moment lasts but 10 seconds only  magnifies the scene's blunt force. 

At this point it almost seems pointless to point out the films flaws, considering how contained they are to the beginning of the movie. However, though the initial missteps don't undercut the power of the conclusion, they do start the film off in a puzzling manner that feels at odds with what follows. 

Rather than proceed in strictly linear fashion, the opening begins with a few vignettes of Solomon already on the Epps' plantation. Later, the film inserts brief flashbacks to Northrup's time with his wife and two children as they go about their life as free and respected members of society. The "payoff" that this structure delivers is little more than a condensed repeat of the opening scenes in a bizarre attempt to generate a moment of psychological tension. Compared with the elegant frankness of the film's majority, these moments can't help but feel rough around the edges. Hans Zimmer's early scoring contributions don't help matters, and threaten to send certain scenes careening off of the rails with their horror movie intensity. 

Thankfully, 12 Years a Slave's triumphs do more than make up for its failures. They absolutely demolish them. With all of the accumulated pain and suffering built up over the course of more than two hours, the film arrives at its shattering conclusion. It's an otherworldly combination of hopefulness about the story's end, as well as a cathartic end to a profoundly wrenching journey. McQueen's film could derisively be deemed his broadest and most accessible. However, by tapping into such a difficult subject matter with such precision, he has delivered a challenging, gripping story by staring evil in the eye and never once backing down. 

Grade: A-

Review: "Shame"

Steve McQueen really loves to make Michael Fassbender stare. Whether it's at a person, an object, or simply off into the distance, both of the director's collaborations with Fassbender have featured quite a bit of soulful/mournful staring. The difference in their second go-round together, though, is that this time the staring actually feels as though it has some characterization to it. Rather than hit a sophomore slump, McQueen and Fassbender have made a vast improvement in Shame, the director's examination of loneliness and sex addiction.

First thing's first, a confession: I'm part of that small group of film enthusiasts who wasn't won over by McQueen's debut, 2008's Hunger. Though it had moments of power, I was ultimately left cold by the director's attempts to use famed IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands as a symbol of eternal dedication to a cause. As such, I was hesitant to endure another McQueen-Fassbender collaboration, even though I was momentarily impressed by what the director pulled off in that film. This time, though, by focusing on an issue as faced by a fictional person (and free from any danger of political bias, accidental or otherwise) McQueen has really hit it out of the park.

Shame revolves around Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a handsome (though I suppose that's a given considering the actor playing him), mid-30s man in Manhattan with a compulsive, all-consuming addiction to sex. His routine, however, is interrupted by the arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan). In the film's opening stretch, McQueen intercuts Brandon walking around his apartment naked with his attempted "flirtation" with an attractive woman on the subway. Though it initially feels slightly hollow, it does visually convey Brandon's state of mind regarding sex: it's not a matter of romance, it's about purely about the physical act. Without spoiling anything, the way Brandon's staring at the woman comes full circle functions as an obvious, albeit powerful statement regarding the character's transformation over the course of the film.

As Brandon, Fassbender caps off a stellar year that has finally given him attention he's deserved for a while now. He's made his mark in roles ranging from Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, to a young Magneto in X-Men: First Class. In Brandon, however, the actor is able to end the year with a performance which goes beyond everything he showed before, which is no small feat. As in Hunger, this is a performance that doesn't rely much on dialogue, and more on physicality and facial cues. However, unlike Hunger, Shame actually gives the actor something to work with, sparse as the script may be. Instead of simply staring off into space, it feels like there's some meaning to Fassbender's long, silent looks, even if we're not entirely sure what they mean. There's no clear answer as to where Brandon's addiction comes from; the closest answer comes from a line from Sissy, "We're not bad people, Brandon. We just come from a bad place." That's it. And yet, under McQueen's guidance, that answer doesn't matter. What's important isn't the baggage that led Brandon to his condition, but rather how he deals with it. What could have become dull and repetitive becomes magnetic in Fassbender's understated, yet powerful presence.

Every bit his equal, despite her significantly small screen time, is Mulligan. Going as far away from her role in An Education (which scored the actress an Oscar nomination) as possible, Mulligan leaves quite the impression whenever she appears, particularly in her drawn-out rendition of "New York, New York." Where Brandon is sullen and introspective, Sissy is a live wire, and seeing Mulligan take charge of the role so fearlessly is impressive as hell. If anything, I wanted more interaction between the siblings, because it felt like there was so much territory in that facet alone that McQueen and co-writer Abi Morgan could have covered. That the script keeps itself so thoroughly focused on Brandon almost becomes a problem, because Sissy sometimes comes close to being underdeveloped to the point of being little more than a plot device. Thankfully, the power that McQueen is able to wring out of Brandon's story makes up for it, but this small issue is one that, if fixed, would only have made the film stronger.

As far as flaws go, there's not much else to go at. Though Shame's opening made me worried that the film would feel hollow, the performances and McQueen's direction manage to dig deeper than one would expect, and the climactic moments hit home. Some dialogue feels on-the-nose, as if McQueen and Morgan wanted to spell out Brandon and Sissy's issues rather than giving it a context. And though the film is edited and paced impeccably for the most part, one of the most important scenes goes on too long by about half a minute. It doesn't ruin the moment or drain it of its power, but after so many successfully executed long takes, it's surprising that a moment involving faster-paced cuts ends up feeling overly long.

On the artistic and technical front, however, the film is quite outstanding. In addition to the almost flawless editing, the film benefits from cold, crisp visuals, long takes (that rarely, if ever, leave one's mind wandering), and a combination of smart sound track choices and a limited score from Harry Escott. Though the movie may earn (just barely) it's NC-17 rating, it's anything but trashy or exploitative. The only shame greater than Brandon's would be to miss the movie (y'know, assuming you're old enough).

Grade: A-

Venice Review Round-Up: "Shame"

I have a confession to make: I'm really not a fan of Irish director Steve McQueen's acclaimed debut Hunger. Though parts of it are extremely well-made and compelling, the lopsided nature of the narrative, which centers on IRA member Bobby Sands' famous hunger strike, bothered me in ways that I wasn't expecting. Even so, and perhaps this is a weakness of mine, when I consider the amount of acclaim Hunger received, I feel inclined to give McQueen another chance with his second feature, Shame. Early word, as you'll see below, is getting off to a fantastic start, so maybe this time around I can actually get on board the McQueen bandwagon.

Variety - Justin Chang (N/A): "...more approachable but equally uncompromising drama..." "Even when he says nothing, which is most of the time, Fassbender transfixes."

The Guardian - Xan Brooks (4/5 stars): "Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan give dynamite performances..." "This is fluid, rigorous, serious cinema; the best kind of adult movie."

IndieWire - Oliver Lyttelton (A-): "...McQueen, like almost no other filmmaker, is confident enough to frame up and let the actors work, and it's the source of the film's most memorable moments..."

InContention - Guy Lodge (3.5/4 stars): "...[McQueen] has a consistently rewarding understanding of the narrative powers of composition..."

Time Out London - Dave Calhoun (4/5 stars): "...McQueen has immersed himself in a wholly different world and made a film that is similarly distinctive and exploratory and grasps you from beginning to end."

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy (N/A): "Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side..." "...may ultimately prove too psychologically pat in confronting its subject's problem, but its dramatic and stylistic prowess provides a cinematic jolt that is bracing to experience."

Venice Verdict: A powerful follow-up to Hunger, Shame shows director Steve McQueen embracing somewhat familiar territory with a bold, striking vision, with strong performances from Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.