12 Years a Slave

This week we are screening 12 Years a Slave - one of the best films of 2013.

Here are my notes:

12 Years a Slave

 USA 2013                    133 minutes

Director:                      Steve McQueen

Starring:                        Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberpatch, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano and Brad Pitt

Awards and Nominations

• Won three Oscars  - Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay (John Ridley) and Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o), and nominated for six more, including Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender)
• Won two BAFTAs – Best Film and Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and nominated for seven more including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender) and Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o)
• A further 212 wins and 193 nominations

“While it is not the role of critics to tell people which films to see and which to avoid (audiences make those decisions for themselves), let me begin by saying that if you have any interest in cinema – or, for that matter, in art, economics, politics, drama, literature or history – then you need to watch 12 Years a Slave."

Mark Kermode

In 1841 Solomon Northrop (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an educated black man born free in New York State, is tricked, drugged and sold into slavery in the South.  Here he initially becomes the property of the relatively benign plantation owner Ford (Benedict Cumberpatch) but later is sold on to the sadistic Epps (Michael Fassbender).  After 12 years he is rescued and finally is able to return to his family.

Northrop published his memoir of his time as a slave in 1853, shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel about Slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and both books provided dramatic stories for the political debate over slavery that took place in the US in the years leading up to the Civil War.  Subsequently the book fell into obscurity until the 1960s when two historians researched Northrop’s story, retraced his journeys, and published a scholarly edition of the text that is still in print.

After the success of his film Hunger (2008) Steve McQueen had expressed an interest in making a film about “the slave era in America” with “a character that was not obvious in terms of their trade in slavery” but it was not until he was given a copy of Northrop’s memoir that he found his story:

“I read this book, and I was totally stunned. At the same time I was pretty upset with myself that I didn't know this book.  I live in Amsterdam where Anne Frank is a national hero, and for me this book read like Anne Frank's diary but written 97 years before – a firsthand account of slavery.  I basically made it my passion to make this book into a film.”

The film received almost universal acclaim from both critics and audiences for its acting, especially the performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o, as well as Steve McQueen’s direction, the screenplay by John Ridley and its faithfulness to Northrop’s original memoir.

Steve McQueen began his career in the UK as a Turner prize winning visual artist whose work included numerous short films.  His first feature film was Hunger (2008), starring Michael Fassbender about the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, and in 2011 he made Shame, once again starring Michael Fassbender as a sex addict whose life is turned upside down when his estranged sister reappears in his life.