Review: 12 Years as a Slave. The cinematic experience of human degradation and suffering

There aren’t many times when a film can actually affect a person and make them forever changed. Cinema is supposed to suspend the audience’s disbelief and make the context of the story both believable and engrossing. Steve McQueen’s film definitely did that. And did it in a way that finally made slavery feel as dehumanizing as the concept is defined to be. For the first time, a contemporary audience can empathize with those generations who were forced into bondage and suffered indignities that most wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy.


The basis of the story is a simple one. Solomon Northup, brilliantly portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a free man of color living with his family in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1841. Mr. Northup was born free and was an educated man. His diction reflected refinement. Mr. Northup was living with his wife and two children, in his own home, while making a respectable living as a trained violinist.


While his family is away on business, Mr. Northup was convinced that he should make his way down to Washington DC and play some concerts there and be paid handsomely. I have not read Mr. Northup’s narrative, which the film is based on, yet but I hope it better explains why an educated man would travel with two total strangers, without alerting his family or friends. Unfortunately, Mr. Northup’s naïveté allowed him to be deceived. He gets drunk and sold to a bunch of slave traders, under the false identity of Platt, a runaway slave from Georgia.

When Mr. Northup awkens and sees himself in bonds and demands his release, he is met with his first beating as a slave. This is the moment in the film where the sickening despair of slaves and the obdurate nature of slaveholders starts to sink in. Legality, justice, fairness, human decency, and respect are all foreign words to those involved in the practice of human flesh mongering. Audience’s have seen slavery before on screen but I think this film is the first time where there is no soft score to mellow out the beating, no artistic glaze to soften the horror of what’s going on. The background is beautiful, but the scenery is never the focus during the acts of inhumanity. When the actors are shown getting beaten. That is exactly what is happening. One person is physically beating another person into submission in order to inflict his/her will.

I believe it wasn’t just the physical devastation I saw that enraged me so, it was the psychological de-evoltion that had been perfected into making the slaves forget their own humanity. For instance, watching the slaves, of both genders, be forced to bathe in the dirty alley’s of New Orleans. Then these same people are evaluated in the same matter that livestock would be. Mothers are often seperated from their children, but since it was a wide belief that slaves weren’t really “people”, such things as compassion and empathy were concepts thought to be too far advanced for the minds of a slave.

When Mr. Northup is sold into the custody of William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) by the cruel and calculating Theophilus Freeman (Paul Giamatti) the audience gets to see what a “nice slaver” is like. I am very glad that Mr. McQueen shows that even though Mr. Ford, who does not embody the sadistic joy of beating his property, he still is in the practice of buying and selling people. And there is no morality in that practice. In fact, it is his lack of scruples and a backbone which allows Mr. Northup to fall into the hands of Edwin Epps, played with a feccund rage and callousness by Michael Fassbender.

Whereas, William Ford used the bible to try to send a sense of relief to his slaves, Edwin Epps uses the word of God to justify and validate his cruelty. At Epps’s plantation, Mr. Northup is subjected to having to pick cotton. In fact, Mr. Northup must pick at least 200 lbs. of cotton per day, or suffer the lash. The slave who seems to be most proficient at picking cotton, and therefore the most desirable/profitable slave is Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Even though Patsey is the smallest slave of Epps’s company, she is able to produce 500 lbs of cotton daily.

The trails and tribulations of Patsey would make even the most inflexible man cry. Epps has an obsession with Patsey. His unflinching adoration and pride toward Patsey do nothing be flare the disdain of his wife Mary (Sarah Paulson). While Mary Epps is not as demonstrative in regards to the abuse she lays on the slaves as her husband, she is equally calculating and callousness. When her wrath is inflamed, her target is Patsey. The way she sees things, her husband has become infatuated with an animal and every time he lays with her sexually, which is no secret, he offends his duty as a white man, a christain, and a husband. Unfortunately for Mary, Epps said that she is replaceable, and Patsey is not.

There was one scene which particularly stirred the heart strings of myself and my girlfriend, while watching the movie. Patsey begged Mr. Northup to help end her life. She pleads with him, saying that it is not a hell-worthy trespass. Moreover, to allow someone to continue to be beaten, raped, and used as chattel was by far the more cruel offense. Mr. Northup refused, and he did so because he said he cannot have someone’s death on his conscience. I won’t dare say what happens to Patsey, but her existence should have been cut short by God’s mercy. Her suffering was one of the most horrid, visceral, and dispacable acts I have ever seen in film. Her tiny dark body and the juxtapostion with the red blood running down it, created a very surreal and potent image. One I doubt I will soon forget.



By the title of the film, one can assume that Mr. Northup’s journey into slavery is not a permenant one. But the point of the film wasn’t to show how Mr. Northup was liberated, but to show how the daily lives of slaves, who weren’t so fortunate as he, were the epitome of purgatory. As I previously stated, this movie has no pretense about itself. While the canvas of Louisiana, with its decadance of colors permeating the sky, is inviting, the harsh reality of slavery decimates whatevery artistry is created by the director.

I fully expect this film to be nominated for best picture, best director, best actor for Mr. Ejiofor, and possibly for best supporting actor and actress for Ms. Nyong’o and Mr. Fassbender. Mr. Northup’s story is an amazing tale and forces people to remember a time in history that is unpleasant. Some people believe that movies like 12 Years as a Slave are no longer necessary because race relations have progressed so much. To those critics, I have a very simple retort: racism has been and remains the most formidable problem in this nation. To say it is non-existent is pure ignorance and idiocy. Like the film, the normalcy of daily degradation is what is most alarming.Let’s not repeat the past and allow racial epitafs and biggoted propoganda to exist. And this isn’t a “white guilt” movie. This is a universal, “let’s start having some tough conversations and ending the hate” movie.