The tone of the dreams I had last night was exactly that of the film “12 Years a Slave.” Horrible film about a prominent free black man (Chiwetel Ejiofor) from Saratoga, NY, who was taken on pretense of a great musical opportunity (he was a violinist) to Washington DC and there kidnapped and sold into slavery.
The brilliance of the film (adapted by John Ridley from Solomon Northup’s memoire and directed by Steve McQueen) is in the depiction of how a free black man had little or no idea of the slavery happening in his own country and was wholly naive to the point of victimization. I confess I, too, did not know, have never seen, really, free black men depicted during that time period. How vastly different was he when he returned to his family. Humiliated and broken, to say the least.
Fortunately the true story didn’t end in the condition of slavery. Solomon Northup was blessed to meet a man from Canada (Brad Pitt) who was willing to risk his life in getting a message to Northup’s family in NY. A very wealthy white man arrived with a sheriff to the plantation and freed him. I do not recall the man’s name but I believe, having looked at the biography briefly, that he was a lawyer who was related to Mr. Northup’s father’s former slave owner who had freed the family. I believe, therefore, the name Northup was also his.
It was a horrible movie. Not in the craft of it, writing, direction or acting, but in the story itself. Difficult to watch. In fact I closed my eyes throughout when the beatings were too harsh to bear watching. I confess to being one who will fast forward or mute such scenes especially in a story that is based on reality. T. S. Eliot said that human kind cannot bear very much reality. And this is a singular characteristic that permits evil—and how good men who do nothing are co-perpetrators, as I believe it was Thoreau who said so but not in those words. Those who are horribly and unforgivably cruel are sustained in their cruelty by the likes of those who cannot bear to see or believe that such cruelty exists.
The depiction of slavery in this film ... I’m at a loss as to how to qualify it in words. Excruciating. This speaks to the brilliance of the story as portrayed, as told, as lived cinematically to evoke the kind of identification with the key character that it does. I don’t know that it gets too much farther apart in relate-ability than the chasm between a 21st century well-educated, well-traveled middle class southern white woman and a 19th century northern black man kidnapped and sold into slavery to be beaten nearly to death on many occasions, live in constant fear of savagery, and miraculously freed. I identified with him and with the victimization to the point of being unable to watch great stretches.
There are two scenes that cinematically are quite brave as they are appropriate and powerful. Time in film, of course, is very different than real life. Communicating a point is different in art than in, say, teaching. So to watch how a man is partially lynched and left hanging, hands tied behind his back, feet (I believe) tied together, who is literally spared as long as he is able to keep pressing his very tippy toes into the mud beneath him to take off just enough pressure to prevent choking for an ungodly length of time, is horrific but necessary. We “get it” but we’re forced to stay with him because we don’t get it unless we are forced to stay with him. To stay. To stay. It is not enough to get it that he is left hanging. But that he is left. Hanging. We are forced to stay. McQueen lets the scene run far, far longer than the usual “we get it” length of time, forcing us to squirm in our vicarious choking for longer than I’ve ever seen in a film. We learn that in fact we will never—ever—really get it. We stay. Other slaves proceed with their lives and duties, barely looking his direction (one risks her life to give him water from a cup and wipe his mouth—a subtle but profound gesture of kindness that imparts dignity), and unless you are looking directly at him, at his booted toes working against the mud, he dangles there like a dead man. Forever, movie-wise. It. Is. Unprecedented.
A second most memorable scene comes after Solomon has trusted the Canadian (having been betrayed at least twice before) with his secret and the man has promised to deliver his message at the risk of his own life, calling it his duty to try to help him. On this wide screen, McQueen has a close up on Solomon’s beleaguered and terrified, sweaty face which takes up well over a third of the frame. The expression is fraught with fear and hope against hope. He is surveying the land—behind him in blended, shapeless hues of green expanse of land. It is a long, long scene. The countenance is at the left hand side of the frame and looking to his right, our left. Such a crop conveys not only an imbalance but a destitution and hopelessness. Emotionally this conveys how his gaze is slammed against the boundary of his fate. Again, we get it. But we can’t really get it. So we are forced to stay. There is nothing to live for if there is no hope. Then his gaze begins to shift and suddenly, yet miraculously not breaking the fourth wall, his gaze holds directly looking at us. Again, we get it—he his looking at the vast hopelessness of his situation, the impossibility of ever again seeing his family, the fear at this prospect is clear in his eyes and the deep waving creases in his forehead and around his eyes, nose and mouth. He’s not looking at us, he is looking past us at all of this. But we are looking directly at him, into his eyes, into the face of our own fear—that just as the Canadian said to the slave owner, all it takes is a law to be passed and your freedom is wholly lost. But no law, he goes on to say, can change the unchangeable truth that every man, no matter his race, is meant to be free—slavery is a cruelty that will bring a day of profound reckoning before God. And while he speaks the truth, we are invited to dwell in the reality along with Solomon to experience how fragile and vulnerable we are to the forces of cruelty. Then his gaze continues to his left, our right hand side of the frame where there is expanse and space, a composition that allows the eyes to see balance and hope. One man’s conviction and willingness to risk his own life results in another man’s merciful release.
Yet the horror is sustained in his inability to free the young woman who is perpetually beaten because she is favored by the cruel drunk bastard who owns her. She embraces Solomon, as if giving him her soul to take away with him from that hell. It seems to be the very heart of such cruelty that Solomon rides away in the carriage as she stands in the road watching him escape her fate.
But it doesn’t end there. The injustice continues. The epilogue reveals that while Solomon and his family’s lawyer take the men to trial—those who kidnapped him as well as those who illegally sold him—were not convicted for their crimes.
While Solomon was successfully reunited with his family, accepted back into their lives after being so radically altered for 12 years, he was never the same, of course. In so much as I will never forget the impact of that young girl’s life and spirit and desperate desire to die...and the vision of her standing in the roadway as he leaves her behind, no doubt he was forever haunted with immoveable grief at her unrelenting suffering. What else could he do but fight as best as he could for freedom on their behalf, knowing the very people he suffered with would never benefit. He fought against slavery every way he could—through discourse in the public meeting places as well as serving in the underground railroad for the remainder of his life.
It’s a horrific story. Don’t see it. Even in its outcome, his return, there is no lift. No sense of a redeeming aspect. We are left with the full weight of our advantages, petty complaints, inadequacies, collusion with cruelty hanging around our necks, left to tippy toe forever...hoping to be cut down, to be set free. Yes it’s a metaphor; I run the risk of sounding impertinent and even disrespectful—as if I still don’t really get it. But I know enough, respect enough, grieve enough to know that, gratefully, I never will.
