12 Years a Slave Part 2

12 Years a Slave (film)

12 Years a Slave
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Steve McQueen
Produced by	Brad Pitt Dede Gardner Jeremy Kleiner Bill Pohlad Steve McQueen Arnon Milchan Anthony Katagas
Screenplay by	John Ridley
Based on	Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
Starring	Chiwetel Ejiofor Michael Fassbender Benedict Cumberbatch Paul Dano Paul Giamatti Lupita Nyong’o Sarah Paulson Brad Pitt Alfre Woodard
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Cinematography	Sean Bobbitt
Editing by	Joe Walker
Studio	Regency Enterprises Film4 River Road Entertainment Plan B Entertainment
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures (US) Summit Entertainment (International)
Release date(s)	August 30, 2013 (Telluride Film Festival) October 18, 2013 (limited) November 1, 2013 (United States)
Running time	134 minutes
Country	United States United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$20 million[1]

12 Years a Slave is a 2013 British-American historical drama film based on the 1853 autobiography Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery. He worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northup’s memoir, co-edited by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon^[2] in 1968,^[3] carefully retraced and validated his account, finding it to be remarkably accurate.^[4] The film is directed by Steve McQueen and written by John Ridley. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup. 12 Years a Slave premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2013. The film is scheduled to have a limited release in the United States on October 18, 2013 with a nationwide release on November 1, 2013.^[5]

Synopsis

12 Years a Slave is based on the 1853 autobiography of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., after being lured from Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1841 and sold into slavery. He worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. ^[6]

Cast

Production

12 Years a Slave is directed by Steve McQueen with John Ridley adapting a screenplay based on Solomon Northup‘s 1853 autobiography Twelve Years a Slave. McQueen’s project, in development for some time, was announced in August 2011 with McQueen to direct and Chiwetel Ejiofor to star as Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery.^[9] McQueen compared Ejiofor’s conduct “of class and dignity” to that of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.^[8] In October 2011, Michael Fassbender (who starred in McQueen’s previous films Hunger and Shame) joined the cast.^[10] In early 2012, the rest of the roles were cast, and filming was scheduled to begin at the end of June 2012.^[11]

With a production budget of $20 million,^[1] filming began in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 27, 2012. It lasted for seven weeks,^[12] concluding on August 13, 2012.^[13]

Release

12 Years a Slave premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2013, before screening at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival on September 5 and New York Film Festival in October.

Fox Searchlight Pictures and Regency Enterprises will commercially release 12 Years a Slave on October 18, 2013 for a limited release with a nationwide release on November 1, 2013.^[14] The film was initially scheduled to be released in late December 2013. Deadline.com reported that the film had “some exuberant test screenings” that led to the decision to move up the release date.^[15] A soundtrack, 12 Years a Slave: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture, will be released on November 11, 2013.

Reception

Critical response

When it premiered at the 2013 Tellruride Film Festival and, more significantly, at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, 12 Years a Slave was universally acclaimed by critics and audiences, who greatly praised the film for its acting (particularly for Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Lupita Nyong’o), Steve McQueen‘s direction, screenplay, production values, and its extreme faithfulness to Solomon Northup‘s eponymous autobiography. The film holds a 97% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 73 reviews with a average score of 9/10, with the sites consensus stating “It’s far from comfortable viewing, but 12 Years a Slave‘s unflinchingly brutal look at American slavery is also brilliant — and quite possibly essential — cinema.”^[16] Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 97 (out of 100) based on 31 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be “universal acclaim”.^[17]

Richard Corliss of TIME Magazine highly heralds the film and its director, Steve McQueen, by stating: “Indeed, McQueen’s film is closer in its storytelling particulars to such 1970s exploitation-exposés of slavery as Mandingo and Goodbye, Uncle Tom. Except that McQueen is not a schlockmeister sensationalist but a remorseless artist.” He also reminds everyone the harsh cruelties of discrimination towards African Americans as shown in the film: “McQueen shows that racism, aside from its barbarous inhumanity, is insanely inefficient. It can be argued that Nazi Germany lost the war both because it diverted so much manpower to the killing of Jews and because it did not exploit the brilliance of Jewish scientists in building smarter weapons. So the slave owners dilute the energy of their slaves by whipping them for sadistic sport and, as Epps does, waking them at night to dance for his wife’s cruel pleasure. It is the rare white man who will speak racial equality to the plantation owner’s power; in 12 Years a Slave, that voice is Brad Pitt’s. He tells Epps, “If you don’t treat them as humans, then you will have to answer for it.” Epps can’t even understand the question.”^[18] Gregory Ellwood of HitFix gave the film an “A-” rating and stated: “”12 Years” is a powerful drama driven by McQueen’s bold direction and the finest performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s career.” He raved highly of the acting of Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o: “Fassbender is essentially the embodiment of evil as Northup’s last slave owner, Edwin Epps. McQueen’s frequent muse (“Hunger,” “Shame”) is relentless in depicting the inhumanity in Epps, but expertly manages to avoid making Epps one note. Instead of pretending there is some good in Epps, Fassbender and (Steve) McQueen provide him a range of combustible madness. As Patsey suffers from Epps’ affections, insecurities and jealousy, Nyong’o eloquently convinces us why her character sees death as her only viable escape. It’s the film’s breakthrough performance and may find Nyong’o making her way to the Dolby Theater next March.” He also admired the film’s “gorgeous” cinematography and the musical score, as “one of Hans Zimmer‘s more moving scores in some time.”^[19] Paul MacInnes of The Guardian scored the film five out of five stars, writing “Stark, visceral and unrelenting, 12 Years a Slave is not just a great film but a necessary one.”^[20]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised it as “a new movie landmark of cruelty and transcendence” and as “a movie about a life that gets taken away, and that’s why it lets us touch what life is.” He also commented very positively about Ejiofor’s performance, while further stating “12 Years a Slave lets us stare at the primal sin of America with open eyes, and at moments it is hard to watch, yet it’s a movie of such humanity and grace that at every moment, you feel you’re seeing something essential. It is Chiwetel Ejiofor’s extraordinary performance that holds the movie together, and that allows us to watch it without blinking. He plays Solomon with a powerful inner strength, yet he never soft-pedals the silent nightmare that is Solomon’s daily existence. The ultimate cruelty he’s subjected to isn’t the beatings or the humiliation. It is that he is ripped from his family, blockaded away from all that he is. Yet such is the force of Ejiofor’s acting that he made me think of Nina Simone’s sublime rendition of “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life,” the two songs from Hair that she transformed into an African-American gospel epiphany. Simone sang about how she, too, had known what it was to lose everything (“Ain’t got no clothes, no country, no friends, no nothing, ain’t got no God”), and because she had lost everything, she had only one thing left: She had life.”^[21]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, gave the film a four star rating and said: “you won’t be able to tuck this powder keg in the corner of your mind and forget it. What we have here is a blistering, brilliant, straight-up classic.” ^[22] Manohla Dargis wrote, in her review for The New York Times, “the genius of “12 Years a Slave” is its insistence on banal evil, and on terror, that seeped into souls, bound bodies and reaped an enduring, terrible price.” ^[23] The Daily Telegraph‘s Tim Robey granted the film a maximum score of five stars, stating that “it’s the nobility of this remarkable film that pierces the soul.”, whilst praising Ejiofor and Nyong’o performance’s.^[24] Tina Hassannia of Slant Magazine said that “using his signature visual composition and deafening sound design, Steve McQueen portrays the harrowing realism of Northrup’s experience and the complicated relationships between master and slave, master and master, slave and slave, and so on.” ^[25]

The film’s producers, director McQueen, lead actor Ejiofor, supporting actors Fassbender and Nyong’o, and writer Ridley were widely tipped for award season success. When commenting on the film’s Oscar buzz, Ejiofor said, “I love the film. I think it’s a really strong piece of work. But I also want people to come to it without all the buzz and the hype and this and that. It’s a story of a man going through an extraordinary circumstance. And I do feel it needs to be engaged with in its own quiet, reflective way.”^[26]

Accolades

See also

• Solomon Northup’s Odyssey (1984), a PBS television film directed by Gordon Parks and starring Avery Brooks
• List of films featuring slavery

References

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