So, there are always a few films during challenges like this where, quite frankly, I am very reluctant to rewatch. I’ve seen them before, and though they are almost always excellent, the subject matter makes them the sorts of films where, for me, once was enough. 12 Years a Slave is very much that sort of a film. It’s raw, brutal, and demonstrates probably better than anything else I have ever experienced just how evil slavery was. If anyone can watch a film like 12 Years a Slave and not get that, I don’t know what to say about it. I mean, I have reached a point where I often do not watch films I have seen before because I would rather spend the time watching something new, but then there are films like this one where, as masterful an accomplishment as it is, I just don’t want to because of how great they are.
By the by, there are at least two more films coming up, one soon, and both directed by Steven Spielberg that both fit that general description.
The basic concept here is, at its core, simple: Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free African American living in pre-Civil War Saratoga Springs, New York. A talented violinist, he’s lured to Washington D.C. for a short term job as a musician in the nation’s capital. It’s all a lie, though, as Solomon is kidnapped, beaten, and sold as a slave down south. He will, as the title of the film and the real Northup’s memoir tell us, be a slave for twelve years. While a slave, he experiences torture and punishment of the physical and psychological variety until he returns to his wife and children to find his son and daughter grown up, and that he is even a grandfather now. Ejiofor’s eyes show a man who is, in many ways, a shadow of his former self, a fellow who feels the need to apologize to his family because of what was done to him.
And for all that, consider this: if there was one slave in the film more pitiful than Solomon, it is the young woman known as Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) because for all that Solomon’s life as a slave was one degradation after another, Patsey was also being raped by her master Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), further abused by her mistress Mary Epps (Sarah Paulson) for the crime of being attractive to Edwin, and even as Solomon rides away from the plantation for the final time, Patsey is still there. Yeah, it may be a relatively happy ending for Solomon, but Patsey is still a slave in a terrible position. I made a note of that point from some film commentator I heard on NPR before I got to see 12 Years a Slave myself, but damn if it doesn’t hit hard seeing it happen. I know the MCU has managed to sign on any number of talented actors to play superheroes and villains, including Ejiofor and Benedict Cumberbatch who also appears in this film while Fassbender made a number of Fox X-Men films, but there was something about Nyong’o’s signing on to be basically the female lead in Black Panther that surprised me for some reason. She’s excellent in this, and every second of her suffering and indignity should do more to affect the viewer than anything Ejiofor’s Solomon goes through, and Ejiofor isn’t exactly a slouch here either.
Furthermore, much has been made of Fassbender’s performance and for good reason. Fassbender is a fantastic actor, so much so that I was surprised the first time I heard him in an interview and learned he was Irish since I had seen him many times and never heard his natural accent. If anything, one of the complaints about this film was about the pre-release marketing focusing more on the white characters than the Black ones, to the point where trailers showed Brad Pitt prominently despite the fact he only appears in two scenes with maybe ten minutes of screentime. And I remember Fassbender was frequently asked about how hard it was to get into that character and be that evil, and to be clear, his character is terrifying. But at the same time, I was wondering when I would see these interviews that it must have been just as hard if not harder for the actors playing slaves. Regardless, Fassbender is the sort of character I might call the “face of evil” if I didn’t suspect I use that observation too often. In the case of Edwin Epps, it fits. This is like the Simon Legree was a real person. He’s a man with no real redeemable qualities, someone who hurts everyone around him, even people he should theoretically love like his wife Mary, and he just doesn’t care. He is cruelness in human form, and a lot of critics made note of Fassbender’s performance here. And quite frankly, like Nyong’o’s, it’s a great performance.
And that is literally all I am going to say about it because there’s a much better and less likely candidate for “face of evil” in this film: Benedict Cumberbatch’s William Ford.
Ford seems like an unlikely choice, I know. Solomon himself at one point says Ford is a decent man. He certainly comes across as one. He’s soft-spoken, listens to Solomon, gives him the gift of a new violin, and seems like a good man. Why would I consider Ford the face of evil over Epps? Epps is obviously evil. Simple: the real evil here isn’t an individual like Epps or Ford. It’s slavery itself. For all Ford comes across as a decent man, he’s still buying and selling slaves. He’s still hiring cruel overseers. He may be the only one to cut Solomon down from a lynching, a harrowing scene by all accounts, but as Solomon puts it, Ford has to realize Solomon is a rightfully free man. Ford likewise bought a female slave without her children, claiming he couldn’t afford them as well. Then why buy the mother at all? Solomon is working on the mistaken assumption that if he demonstrates how educated he obviously is, Ford will realize he’s a kidnapped free man and send him home. Sure, Ford could do that. But he says something about debts and can’t. Or, more accurately, he won’t.
Ford, as I see it, is like the blind man in Get Out. Sure, the blind man says he doesn’t care about the color of the skin of the man whose body he is going to be inheriting. He probably even believes it. He’s the only one to look regretful when Armitages are having their auction. But, and this is the important part, he is still taking advantage of a racist system to his own benefit. That’s Ford. If Ford were truly a good man, he wouldn’t be buying slaves at all. He is certainly a better man than Epps and many of the other white men in the film, but that doesn’t make him good. He’s evil in the sense of “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing” sort of evil. And unlike Solomon, Ford may actually be in a position to do something about the situation. He just doesn’t.
And that’s why slavery itself is the real evil here. My job requires has, for multiple years, required me to teach a short selection of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography where he describes how he learned to read and write, a section that starts when Douglass notes a kindhearted mistress who initially taught him some letters quickly changed after instruction from her husband about why that was a bad idea. Douglass chalks up her change in demeanor to the corrupting power of slavery. Pretty much everyone in this film involved in slavery has been corrupted that way to see slaves as property, animals, or worse. Even before Ford buys Solomon, Solomon has been beaten by his captors, advised by another captive to keep quiet about his education, and seen Black men muzzled, scarred, and mutilated. And that’s before the scene in the auction house where slaves were forced to stand naked, show off their teeth, or even do a little dance like someone was buying a used car or something. There’s nothing good about slavery, something I am going to be very much keeping in mind when I, for a project like this, once again sit through Gone with the Wind.
That corruption even extends to the slaves themselves. Patsey left the plantation to get some soap. Epps, furious, wants her beaten. His wife wants her really beaten, and Epps initially hands the whip to Solomon. And in case the audience missed the implication that Solomon couldn’t go easy on Patsey, Epps makes it clear: either Solomon really lays into Patsey, or Epps will murder every Black person he sees. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t do that and completely get away with it. It’s a small wonder, after all the things that happened, that Solomon is reluctant to ask Canadian laborer Samuel Bass (Pitt) for help. Everyone else has disappointed him up until that point.
Solomon, of course, did get his freedom. For the rest, the Civil War was coming. Whether it would get there, and the 13th Amendment with it, in time for Patsey, no one knows. Unlike Solomon Northup but like untold others, her story disappeared from the history books, never to be recovered.
NEXT: Well, that was depressing. I think it’s a good thing the next film in the Stacker Challenge is going in the exact opposite direction. Be back soon for the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille.
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