The Best Films of the Decade: #23: 12 Years a Slave (2013)
In just 13 Days the decade will come to a close and so for movie lovers like me it is an opportunity to look over the decade of movies that are left behind. Over the next few weeks I am going to count down the best films of the past 10 years from #40 to #1. My choices are personal choices swayed by nothing but the love I have for this medium. These are all great movies. These films all achieved something great. All reached for something special. They are the best of the decade . . .
If modern movies have a no-fly zone, it has to be America’s
institution of slavery. Here is an issue no one wants to tackle, chiefly
because the aftershocks still reside in our culture even after 153 years.
That’s not to say that recent modern films haven’t edged close to the subject,
but it has come in the form of The
Birth of a Nation, Amistad and Django Unchained – not exactly a crop of honorable explorations of the
greatest blight on America’s history.
12 Years a Slave is the only film I can think of in the 21st century that dared to look slavery square in the
face. It is a staggering experience largely because director Steve
McQueen does away with the conceit of making this film a grand epic (or worse,
to see it through the eyes of white characters). Instead of trying to see
slavery en masse, he narrows the central focus to a single human being, a
real-life New York farmer and professional violinist named Solomon Northup
(Chiwetel Eijofor), a wrongly convicted man who is cast into the whirling
maelstrom of southern plantation owners who have created an environment so
cruel and yet so commonplace that, at one moment, workers go about their daily
chores while Solomon hangs from a gallows while his feet keep him centimeters
from death.
The central fulcrum of the film lies in the performance of Chiwetel Eijofor, a
veteran of the British stage whose performance here is largely physical.
He’s an intelligent, successful man who was tricked in a bar one night, then
kidnapped and sent down south to be part of the industrial complex of slavery
itself. His body bears the weight and confusion of his plight, of a
wrongly convicted man whose pleas for help go largely unheard. He can say
so many things without saying a word, which is effective because Solomon spends
much of the story silently screaming for help. Who can he trust?
Who can he tell? Who can to turn to for help? With that, a slight
but effective thriller aspect creeps in under the surface. Who can he
turn to that will ultimately help him?
I have attempted to avoid tagging 12 Years
a Slave as any kind of thriller, but as Solomon attempts to
find any form of help there is a thriller element. We want this to end; we want
to see him reunited with his wife and children. We’ve seen the inhuman
cruelty around him – most achingly in the form of a slave mistress named Patesy
(Supporting Actress winner Lupita Nyong’o) whose bearing of mental, physical,
emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her sociopathic master (Michael
Fassbender) gives the film, I think, the biggest and most effective punch in
the gut.
This is a difficult film to sit through, but then again it is a difficult
period to conceive in your mind. We are forced to come face to face with the
most uncomfortable subject in our history and stand squarely in its shoes. This
isn’t a movie that skews the focal point to avoid having us deal with
complicated emotions, no, this movie confronts the issue head-on and the
effects are devastating.
About the Author: Jerry Roberts
Jerry Roberts is a film critic and operator of two websites, Armchair Cinema and Armchair Oscars. 
