Why You Should Feel all the Feelings with 12 Years A Slave

I wasn't sure that I wanted to see 12 Years a Slave. I knew that it was probably an excellent film and that it was going to be nominated for all of the awards this year, but I just wasn't sure that I could stomach it. I also wasn't sure that I wanted to subject myself to two hours of movie that would ultimately make me feel horrible about a past that I can never truly understand. 

But curiosity (as well as an obsessive need to bite at every single bit of Oscar bait) won out and I wound up spending a Saturday night at the movies, in a theater full of people who were sobbing as loudly as I was. 

And I am very glad that I did because 12 Years a Slave is not only the best film I've ever seen about slavery. It's one of the best films I've ever seen about anything. 

It begins with the familiar text; “this film is based on a true story”. I’ve seen those words so many times that I normally wouldn’t think about them. But 12 Years A Slave isn’t just some approximation of America’s most terrifying institution. It’s the very real, very true story of a man named Solomon Northrop, who lived in Syracuse with his family and woke up one morning to discover that he’d been chained to the floor of a dungeon. It sounds more like a setup for a horror film than a thing that actually happened in the real world. Nevertheless, free men like Northrop were kidnapped from the North and sold into slavery.  Solomon Northrop was lucky enough to escape and wrote a book detailing his experiences, but how many more died quietly in captivity, taking their secrets with them to the grave?

Michael Fassbender is good at making friends.

It's one of the many things that 12 Years leaves you to ponder. 

There are many brutal scenes of people being whipped, raped, separated from their children, but it is the quiet moments in between those things that are even more impactful. Within the first five minutes, Solomon is beaten by a man with a board and it is awful, but not as awful as the moment afterwards, when he removes his shirt and you get just a glimpse of the ripped bloodstains on the back of it. Or the way he pleads with the man to let him keep his clothing because it was a gift from his wife and the man insists that it’s just “rags and tatters.” The violence in itself is devastating, but the existential reality is even more so. Solomon must silence his intellect if he wants to survive. He must hold back his talents. No one can even know that he can read or write.

I can't wait until the awards, when I can finally learn how to pronounce Chiwetel.

Music plays a key role in 12 Years a Slave, from Solomon's fiddle-playing to the aforementioned funeral scene to the cruel taunts of a particularly brutal overseer. So does the actual landscape of the deep South. There are so many extended shots that revel in the Louisiana wilderness where the movie was filmed. The plantations themselves are physically beautiful, which only elevates the more horrific scenes, including one where Solomon hangs from a noose for an entire day, while the surrounding people go on with their lives. 

So much of this is just an incredible accomplishment for Steve McQueen. He shows a remarkable amount of restraint as a director. This is not a film that attempts to lecture or shame anyone. And while there are certainly elements of 12 Years that are shocking, it never succumbs to sensationalism, which is an achievement on its own. It does not feel the need to preach to anyone, because there is no one underlying message here. Slavery is bad? Okay. We all knew that. 12 Years is the first film about slavery that is brave enough to say: “This is the way things were and that’s it.”

Okay, Miss Alfre. I see you. 

By the end, when a man shows up calling Solomon by his actual name, we- the viewers- and Solomon himself barely even register it. Everything but the plantation feels so long ago and so far away. I’m not ashamed to admit that I spend the last twenty minutes of the movie in tears and the very end caused me to sob. I wasn’t the only one. On the walk back to the car, in the freezing cold, my brother said to me, “Why were you crying? It had a happy ending.”

“But it didn’t!” I said and the tears started coming again. Because, yes, Solomon Northrop is a free man. He leaves the plantation, but he also leaves behind countless others who will never know a life outside of slavery. Patsy clings to him like a life raft, but he makes no promises to save her. This isn't Django and Solomon is not going to return and kill all of the white people and Sam Jackson and rescue Olivia Pope from Leo's evil clutches. This is the most painful part of the history of our nation. And like those twelve years that Solomon spent away from his family, we will never be able to take back those atrocities.

I expect that in the coming days and weeks, I’m going to continue to digest this film. I’m going to think of other things that I really liked about it and I’m going to maybe think of things that I didn’t like as much. But I will say this: If you are on the fence about going to see 12 Years A Slave, don’t be.