A great movie that some people may never check out because of reports of the film’s brutality. Yes, it is hard to watch in certain sections, but I think you’ll survive if you watch it. One woman sitting in the row behind me cried through about three quarters of it—-to the point of distracting other people—-but she never had a heart attack or anything.
What Works: By taking the story of a born-free man illegally trafficked into slavery, the film (based on a true story) uses the fundamental injustice of Solomon’s plight to really show that nobody belongs in slavery, whether they’re raised in it or not. It only amplifies the core wrongness of everything we’re being shown. And the film’s depiction nails the banal cruelty behind the system. There’s one amazing sequence where Solomon is literally hanging from a tree but his feet can touch the ground as he awaits word on whether or not he’ll be hung, and we watch everyone just go about their daily routine, pretending not to see him there or that anything is strange. That one minute of film speaks volumes about the casual nature of horrors as they’re being committed.
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s impressive acting is forced to be almost entirely internal since his character can never reveal his true feelings, but his sad eyes will crush you during quiet scenes like Solomon burning a letter that can free him. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Michael Fassbender creates a memorable villain as Epps, a slave owner who justifies his barbarism with cherry-picked Bible passages. He has an obsession with a slave played by Lupita Nyong’o (in a vivid breakthrough performance that is arguably the best in the film) but makes no effort to hide this warped “romance” from his wife (a nasty Sarah Paulson, acting with a menace I’ve never quite seen from her before), who regularly lashes out at Nyong’o with jealousy. It’s hard to tell who is worse, Epps (who sometimes seems to be going crazy from power) or his wife, but the film presents them as a terrifying portrayal of overgrown babies in power. A scene that gives us a whip’s eye view of Nyong’o’s lashing is hard to shake afterwards.
What Doesn’t Work: Although this film has moments of beauty and the cinematography is gorgeous, it’s only fair to admit that it’s just not going to be for everyone. Audience reactions in the theater I saw it with were wildly diverse with a white woman behind me crying through practically the whole thing, a younger black man in the row in front of me looking a little bored, an older white couple to the side of me looking really uncomfortable and eventually disappointed, and a pair of younger black women to the other side of me wide-awake. It’s not every film that can inspire reactions of anger, discomfort, sadness, hope, and even boredom. Even though Steve McQueen (the director, not the 60’s icon) is intentionally going for a clear-eyed, pared-down version of a very emotional subject, it could translate as a cold experience for some people.
I also have to admit that I wasn’t crazy about some of the superfluous celebrity cameos (Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberpatch, Alfre Woodard, SNL’s creeeeepy Taran Killam, and Brad Pitt all have brief roles, Pitt’s feeling particularly distracting), and there’s a jarringly bad performance by Paul Dano, who should never be allowed to try a Southern accent again. It’s also worth noting that none of the principal players (not British director Steve McQueen, not Wisconsin-raised screenwriter John Ridley, not British actors Cumberpatch, and Fassbender, nor any of the other white cast that is supposed to be Southern) are from the South. [I can remember when Quentin Tarantino was talking about Django Unchained and saying he only wanted Southern actors in Southern roles because of how inauthentic British actors in slavery movies seemed.] Here, there could be accusations of being inauthentic, and there already have been as films jockey to become the “Oscar Frontrunner.”
What I Would Have Done Differently: Made a few more token efforts to cast Southern actors, maybe not had every black female slave with a speaking role be in a “relationship” with their slave master (there are three situations like this—-Nyong’o, Woodard’s character, and a third character played by Adepero Oduye in a movie that only has three black female slaves speak), and had more emotion in the weirdly cold ending. Other than that though, this is a memorable, searing film that’s fully earned its kudos.