Steve McQueen

Slavery was horrible. This is not up for debate; it’s a fact. Yet our discussion of this wretched time in our civilization tends to feel removed and academic. How, we wonder, could society have countenanced the suppression of an entire race? What forces could have conspired to treat people as nothing more than property? Was nineteenth-century America motivated by economic gain, rationalizing that the ends justified the means, or did slave owners honestly believe in racial superiority? These are questions worth asking, lest such horrid history repeat itself, but they approach slavery more as an intellectual concept than as the actual, systemic brutalization of humans. 12 Years a Slave—Steve McQueen’s gripping, unapologetically savage account of one servant’s struggles—bucks that trend and instead takes a hauntingly intimate approach. It is not about slavery’s politics. It is about its mechanics.

After opening with a brief series of ragged scenes that bluntly depict the daily rigors of plantation workers, the movie flashes back to Upstate New York, where its hero, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), lives comfortably with his family. One night, he goes out drinking with his white colleagues, oblivious of their plans to sell him into slavery. (As Solomon passes out, one of his companions murmurs, “More’s the pity,” with a tone of scalding indifference that will pollute the remainder of the film.) He wakes to find himself in chains, and his protestations of freedom are met with the lash. Then, he’s shipped downriver, and his dozen-year nightmare begins. Read More