12 Years a Slave

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4.5 of 5 stars Average: 4.25 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: 12 Years a Slave is a story “inspired by actual events” about a black man from upstate New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the deep south in the mid 19th century. It stars Nigerian-British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and is directed by Steve McQueen, “the King of Cool.”

Nick: Did the film grow on you between now and when we saw it?

Dustin: Not really. I did think about it a lot, but I still have the same problems with it as I had leaving the theater. The characters were two-dimensional. The whites in the movie, except for Parker and Brad Pitt (or "Burapi," as his Japanese fans call him), were all pure evil with no other sides to their personality. British actor Suchandsuch Sherlock Holmes/Wrath of Khan remake guy Cumberbund was more complex, but his was a minor role. The black characters were all innocent and faultless, with the minor exception of the slave who marries her master. Solomon and his owner (Michael Fassbender) never showed much depth, which grew more frustrating as the film went on. There were things set up in the movie that were never explained or fleshed out. In one of the opening scenes Solomon (Ejiofor) is seduced by a slave woman. I kept it in the back of my mind the whole film to watch for where the woman came from. She never appeared again. I’ll get into Burapi’s performance later.

What are your thoughts?

Nick: This is a story from one man’s perspective. To me it was just a story of the injustice done to one man in a very fucked up time. Not many characters have a chance of being more than two-dimensional because Solomon doesn’t get to know anybody that well. Then the woman at the beginning is brought back for a second but just in order to explain how he got to the scene. That instance was supposed to be one that made you ask what’s going on instead of who is that woman? It made me think here are two slaves who’ve probably had nothing to be happy about and have had no (welcome) intimacy, so the woman was seeing if having an intimate moment of her choosing would do something, and I feel that the emotions the two show during and after answer the question. Of course this is up for debate.

Dustin: Well, this is all from Solomon’s point-of-view, which is why the characters he doesn’t know so well seem shallow. But did everything have to be so black and white? Wait, I get it now!

Nick: Since this seems to be a major point, what for you does Solomon lack in order to say that he lacks depth?

Dustin: I was waiting for him to show some character flaw that would make him more relatable. He starts out as a educated, talented musician. His only flaw is being too naive perhaps, but that’s more of a problem when other people take advantage of his trusting nature, and not really much of a character flaw. He makes a mistake at the beginning by being too trusting of the two crackers who end up selling him into slavery and the alcoholic overseer he thought could help him. But other than coming home a little bit wiser for his experience, he is just portrayed as a victim throughout the film and doesn’t ever grow.

Nick: Solomon does make mistakes, but to call them such in the circumstance he finds himself in is up to the viewer. When he runs, he runs into a posse hanging up some other runaways. Solomon fights and argues with some of his overseers, which the other slaves tell him is a mistake. He also (technically) commits adultery. What other possible mistakes could a man in his position make? Besides maybe killing some white folk, but Jamie Foxx did enough of that last year.

Dustin: I would like to see a Django-esque sequel to this movie.

Solomon makes some mistakes, but he doesn’t have any human flaws, just as the white characters don’t have any redeeming characteristics. Yeah, he technically cheats on his wife… after not seeing her for a decade and being seduced. Even then he only gets to third base off frame.

Nick: You have already stated that some white people did have redeeming characteristics but you also didn’t answer my question of what human flaws could he have committed in his situation? Also would you want them to change the real Solomon’s story just so it could fit the more entertaining aspects of film?

Dustin: He acts as a moral compass throughout the entire film. They could have had him acting like an asshole at times. Anything that would have made him more relatable.

Nick: So was he not an asshole when he told the black woman to stop crying about her children? Or when he wouldn’t mercifully kill a friend who pleaded for him to do so? I feel that anything he could do, whether good or bad, would not be seen as such because what bad thing could a slave possibly do that would make a free man more than a century later be able to feel more like him?

Dustin: He was helping the woman, telling her to be strong and survive. Same when he wouldn’t kill the woman who asked him to. He wouldn’t give in to defeatism. But you’re right, it is a lot to ask a white person 150 years later to identify with a slave. I couldn’t possibly know what it was like. The movie did a good job portraying what it must have been like to be a slave though, but I didn’t relate to this character, or any character, which made it hard for me to really care about this movie.

Nick: You’re right as well in the sense that he wouldn’t give in to defeatism and that worked for him but for those characters who were defeated I feel they didn’t have happy endings. So from their perspective he might have been being unkind, but it had as much to do with convincing himself to believe. You are also right in that these characters are not relatable, but it didn’t bother me because if someone asked me to relate myself to a slave or a white slave owner I would (hopefully) not find a thing to say.

Dustin: Personally, I would have liked it better if the slave owners were portrayed as more human. Why not have a slave owner who was basically a decent fellow, like Cumberbund was in his brief segment, but needed slaves to get the labor done on his plantation? Instead, the slave owners are about as deep as vaudeville villains, twirling their mustaches.

Nick: I will start by saying I have always hated the Hollywood ideal of a bad white person from the 1800s having a mustache. It’s OK to have a beard and mustache or just a beard, but to have a mustache, you must be one evil son of a bitch! So there was a slave owner who was decent, and then there was a brief stint of another who let Solomon play music for crowds instead of working the fields (though this is hardly shown). I believe that all the “good” white people balance out Paul Dano, Fassbender, Sarah Paulson and the devious duo from the beginning.

Dustin: I guess it’s true in real life bad people have mustaches. Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Stalin. And good people always have long hair, like Jesus, Moses, Brad Pitt.

Nick: I think people just think of those first. Wyatt Earp? Doc Holiday? Wild Bill Hickok? I’m sure I could go on.

Dustin: That was actually supposed to be a segue to Brad Pitt in this movie. Burapi is featured prominently in the trailer, but he only appears long enough in the movie to deliver some ham-fisted dialogue on how slavery is bad, looking like he just came off the set of Che (see image 1, below) in a scene that should have ended up on the cutting-room floor. His performance here makes his character in World War Z seem tragically flawed and totally relatable by comparison.

Image 1. Benicio del Toro (left), Brad Pitt

Nick: I personally think he just came from the set of Witness (see image 2, below)! Though this is one area where we completely agree. His character is so short lived, yet so profound that it doesn’t fit into the storyline naturally. Brad Pitt is actually a producer on this film. He even brought it to Plan B to make, which is a subsidiary of Paramount, who were angry that Mr. Pitt didn’t give them the chance to make it, which he was legally supposed to do. The fact that I knew this going into the film made me even angrier that Pitt ended up as the white man with a heart of gold that the black man needs in order to get out of their bad situation. Although if that is what really happened, then I can’t knock the character, but they should have had his character around a little longer and find him out that way instead of an over the top speech that felt out of place and straight from the mouth of Lincoln.

Image 2. Brad Pitt (left) with Harrison Ford in Witness (1985)

Dustin: Lincoln was actually pretty racist in real life. He believed slavery was wrong, but he still had racist, condescending attitudes toward the blacks.

Nick: Lincoln in the film Lincoln is who I was referencing because his character was just as flawless. More like the image we’re fed of Lincoln than the real person, which is why I didn’t like that movie! HOLLYWOOD!!!!!!

Dustin: When Burapi told Michael Fassbender, “Imagine the laws were changed tomorrow and white people were made slaves,” do you think he was referencing Obama’s secret agenda to turn white people into slaves?

Nick: Is that what Bill O’Reilly’s saying?

Dustin: I reckon.

Now that I’ve run out of steam griping about this movie, what do you think it did well?

Nick: Everything (beyond Pitt’s character). One thing that I loved was the workload it showed of the slaves. So many times it was hard to tell whether they got done sweating, crying or a little of both. The camera angles during the whipping scenes were phenomenal, as well as the scene of Solomon struggling in a noose while people were just going on about their day, noticing him but not reacting as if its just another day. Also Chiwetel Ejiofor has been my favorite actor for the longest time. He’s phenomenal in Dirty Pretty Things and Redbelt. All of his other roles as smaller characters are solid, like in Love Actually, Inside Man and Serenity.

Dustin: The casting was superb. Although all the celebrities in minor roles was kind of distracting, as it took away from the realism. When I’m thinking, “Isn’t that Taran Killam from Saturday Night Live?” it takes me out of the scene. But for the most part, the major roles are filled by unrecognizable actors. The faces of the actors were all wonderful, just like in Captain Phillips a few weeks ago.

Nick: Which I complained for having the major face as the main character and referenced this film for doing the opposite, but I completely agree about Taran and then, also, when Pitt showed his darling face.

Dustin: The movie also did a great job depicting what the realities of slavery must have been like--forcing someone into servitude, ripping apart families, trying to break the human spirit. This all seemed brutally honest.

I found it ironic the plantation owner would whip slaves for picking less than 200 pounds of cotton in a day, but then they would have to use 300 pounds of cotton to wipe the blood off the backs of the whipped slaves. Not only was he a bad slave owner, he was a bad businessman.

Nick: You get a sense in the film that Edwin Epps (Fassbender) ran by his emotions and often lacked composure and a sense of reality. Epps pretty much gets outsmarted by every character he runs in to. When he realizes he’s being outsmarted he loses that composure.

Dustin: Anything else you want to add?

Nick: Steve McQueen (III)--as is his moniker so no one confuses him for THAT McQueen--has made three very solid films in a short span of time. His other ones being Hunger and Shame.  Both star Fassbender and both are fantastic.