-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Skip Sheffield
There are several worthy new film releases this Friday.
Standing head and shoulders above the rest is “12 Years a Slave.”
Be advised “12 Years” is not light entertainment. It is
perhaps the most realistic depiction ever of slavery in the USA . Slavery is
never a pretty sight or sound.
Interestingly, the two main forces of “12 Years,” director
Steve McQueen and star Chiwetel Ejiofor, are from the United Kingdom .
“12 Years a Slave” is a true story based on the account of
his abduction and enslavement by African-American man Solomon Northup, published in
1853. The screenplay is by another African-American, John Ridley, who wrote the
stirring tale of Tuskegee
airmen for “Red Tails.”
Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was a free-born American man
living in Saratoga Springs ,
New York Washington , D. C. Northrup was approached by
two men with a proposition to earn quick, big money touring with a circus show. The
men plied Northrup with wine until he was quite drunk. When he woke up in the
morning he found himself in chains and manacles. He was forced aboard a sailing
ship bound for Louisiana
manned by slavers, where he was sold to the highest bidder by Theophilus
Freeman (Paul Giamatti).
The high bidder was William Ford (British actor Benedict
Cumberbatch), a Baptist minister who was relatively benign as slave owners go.
Unfortunately Northrup ran afoul of
Ford’s cruel, racist foreman John Tibeats (Paul Dano), who forced
Northrup’s sale to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a disreputable, sadistic
slave-driver if there ever was one. Epps’ wife Mary (Sarah Paulsen) was not
much better, and she was particularly cruel to her husband’s favorite slave
Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Patsey is the anguished face of total submission and
humiliation, raped regularly by Epps and ordered whipped until lacerated and
bleeding by Mary.
There will be many instances when you will want to avert
your eyes, and perhaps that is the point, painfully, powerfully driven home. Slavery was
ugly and horrific and it was a tragedy it lasted as long as it did in the
alleged “Land of the Free.” It is an interesting coincidence that Brad Pitt,
who played a sleazy operator in the lousy film “The Counselor” plays the good
guy, Canadian abolitionist Samuel Bass in this film. Michael Fassbender, who
was also in “The Counselor” and two previous Steve McQueen films “Hunger” and
“Shame,” pulls out all the stops in portraying one of most reprehensible
villains ever seen on film. “12 Years a Slave” is strong yet still necessary
medicine to remind us what tore our country apart a century and a half ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment