"12 Years a Slave" Offers Powerful Look at Dark Chapter in Nation's History

By The Movie  Maven

Film can render history as touching and chilling, bringing new life to events that seem calcified when recounted in textbooks. 

"Lincoln" offered a glimpse into the nearly sainted slain president last year and  "12 Years a Slave" presents the same opportunity for those struggling to get a handle on what America's peculiar institution, as it was once known, could possibly have been like, for slave and owner alike.

The film offers a clever conceit spun from free man Solomon Northup's truth – he was a not a slave, but was drugged and taken from his home in Washington D.C. and transferred back to the south. Life as a slave was hard, but how much more devastating must it be for someone who has lost his freedom?

Chiwetel Ejiofor takes a quiet role – he must stay grounded as chaos swirls around Northup – and successfully conveys the heart of a man who needs to scream out his frustration, but is too smart to do so. He wants to survive, and Ejiofor more than convincingly portrays his yearning, his cleverness and his natural leadership – other slaves seek Solomon out, and owners are alternately impressed or threatened by him.

Northup must contend with profiteers – his kidnappers and a heartless auctioneer, played by the always effective Paul Giamatti, and the owners and overseers who control his fate. Among them, Michael Fassbender and Paul Dano register deepest as weak men who are undone in the face of Northup's intelligence and integrity.

The film also manages to communicate the damage done by slavery on both owner and owned – one loses his freedom, but the other loses his humanity. Though there are undoubtably villains in "12 Years a Slave," they are not over-the-top Hollywood-style bad guys, to director Steve McQueen's credit.  They choose to do wrong over and over and over again, their decency slowly leaching away as they exercise control in ever more brutal ways.

Sarah Paulson represents that loss of humanity most acutely in her approach to Lupita Nyong'o's woebegone Patsey, the object of Fassbender's twisted affection. The images of Patsey's suffering and subsequent desperation are perhaps the ones that linger most at the film's conclusion. It is tempting to keep one's eyes on Ejiofor as the film nears its end, but watch for Nyong'o's response to his fate. McQueen doesn't linger on it, but the shot is deeply affecting and suggests how Patsey's end will probably be far different from Solomon's.