12 Years a Slave (2013)

Americans have a spotty track record when it comes to confronting their past (and current) sins. Especially when it comes to slavery. Sure, we may learn about it in grade school, and how it was bad, but we never really learn the full extent of just how bad it was. Perhaps it is somewhat ironic, then, that it took a British director to make a film that shows slavery in all its gory details. The story is simple. Solomon Northup is a well-educated and respected freeman living in New York who is kidnapped by con artists and sold into slavery. His family, his identity, everything he holds dear is brutally stripped from him. Solomon Northup becomes the property of another man. If there is one thing 12 Years a Slave does successfully is that it really drives home that idea of property, what it means to be someone's property, not even worthy of being thought of as a human being. And there is the violence. The whippings, beatings, lynchings; all the blood and gore, the flayed skin, the screaming, the pleading, the absolutely horrific dehumanization. Even the animals are not treated this poorly. But it is not all physical. The slavers use religion and psychological manipulation to ensure that their slaves never revolt against them. They are taught that God decrees it to be so. And McQueen shows all of this without flinching. McQueen originally came to the cinema as a director of experimental films, and his background in the avant-garde is on display here. There are times when he delves into visual abstraction. In one scene he obsessively focuses on the ripples made in the water by the steamship wheel. This deviation into such territory actually helps to ground the viewer, and McQueen's stylistic choices elevate this from what could have been just another "important" Hollywood movie into a genuine work of art. About as far from Spielberg's history class as one can get.