12 Years a Slave (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

12 Years a Slave (2013) – S. McQueen

A horror movie in all respects -- except for the usual overt trappings of the genre.  For example, instead of creepy music, we get the dramatic cues of the typical Oscar-winning drama.  This was really the only drawback for me. Director Steve McQueen already displays the terrible realities of slavery: the brutal physical torture (hard labour but also whippings, sexual assault, and lynchings) and the chilling psychological torture (being separated from family, not knowing whether to vie for positive treatment from the master and be judged for doing so by other slaves, the constant wish to take risks to escape). But if he’d treated this like Roger Corman did his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, it could have been even more effective – although I’ll admit it probably wouldn’t have won the Oscar. Chiwetel Ejiofor is outstanding as the free Black man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery (with Benedict Cumberbatch as the kind but cowardly master who allows evil to happen anyway and Michael Fassbender as the just plain evil master). With McQueen’s help, Ejiofor does show us the terror of the man in this predicament (amid the nicely rendered pre-Civil war environs), allowing us to imagine how we would feel and what we would do. The rest of the cast are excellent in support (including Alfre Woodard in a bit part and Lupita Nyong’o in a large but thankless one, deservedly winning an Oscar).  Still, cranking it up even further with the trappings of the horror film could have pushed this to the maximum confrontational level it deserves; it remains a humanistic classic nevertheless.