Steve McQueen's 12 YEARS A SLAVE, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor

One of ILX's most hated film directors looks due for some awards!

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-telluride-toronto-2013-steve-mcqueens-12-years-a-slave

I like both of his previous films and plan on catching this at TIFF. So there?

I loved the first, detested the second, am hopeful about this.

It certainly seems much more in line w/ Hunger, and Ejiofor is pretty much always great.

the second wasn't even just bad but seemed to offputtingly frame even his ideas about, or template for, making a film - like it was broodingly & awfully scored, straining to be epic, tritely palindromic, crudely montaged &c&c&c&c&c&c&c

so i guess curious about this but not super psyched to catch it

standing ovations, tears, walk outs.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/07/12-years-a-slave-toronto-premiere

i never even watched shame as the kicking it got here made me lol so much. hunger was pretty great tho.

Is McQueen still doing a Fela biopic?

Shame was just really boring. Hunger OTOH I really really liked.

dug hunger, lookin forward to this

somehow people walking out saying "this will win the Oscar" doesn't fill me with confidence.

This was by some distance my least favorite of his.

On the one hand:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9662243/is-12-years-slave-really-best-picture-lock

On the other:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/toronto-film-festival-announcing-2013-award-winners

didn't hate them, but found his previous films glib tbh (esp. hunger)

trailer makes this one look like a best picture nomination rather than a good film

(^ a great contribution to the thread, i know)

It'll be the only thing people say about it now until it actually bows.

i'll see any serious film (or not to serious, i guess) on this topic. just to see how they handled it, if nothing more.

also who cares about trailers?

You know you want it: http://cityarts.info/2013/10/16/cant-trust-it/

man that site has really gone downhill lol

mcqueen on charlie rose said he wants the book to become as well-known, read in schools etc as the diary of anne frank

Gordon Parks made an earlier adap for PBS starring Avery Brooks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup's_Odyssey

(also as I do plan to see 12YaS this weekend, I'm not reading plot-recounting reviews per usual)

Armond doesn't recount the plot, mostly complains about the Exorcist.

this is like the only movie left this year that im pumped about

Gordon Parks made an earlier adap for PBS starring Avery Brooks.

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 3:01 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

damn. and joe seneca! and john saxon, lol. wonder if i can track that down

had a hard time reading that whole Armond review cuz of the formatting but it seems like basically his argument is that he doesn't like the movie because it's depressing...

judging from my skimming, he's not alone

My twitter feed is convinced he doesn't like it because white people, who are racists, love it.

http://davidsimon.com/slavery-a-film-narrative-and-the-myth-of-original-intent/

[McQueen is] brilliant at suggesting how long a minute can last, though wobbly at depicting the passage of years, which matters here.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9868597/12-years-slave-best-actor-race

otm quote

this is like if Gravity was about slavery

Not the right thread, but his questions about Redford's range is an actor are otm.

I've never known M.H. to NOT write something totally otm.

quoted the company's copresident Nancy Utley as saying, "We always wanted people to know that it's '12 Years a Slave,' not '1 Million Years a Slave'"

omg

Not 165 Minutes a Slave

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9870721/the-cultural-crater-12-years-slave

My review of the thing.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/12-years-a-slave-black-oscar-bait-essay.html

My reaction to 12 Years a Slave is borne, largely, by exhaustion. I am worn out by slavery and struggle narratives. I am worn out by broken black bodies and the broken black spirit somehow persevering in the face of overwhelming and impossible circumstance. There seems to be so little room at the Hollywood table for black movies that to earn a seat, black movies have to fit a very specific narrative. Thoughtful romantic comedies like Love & Basketball and the original Best Man, which has a sequel later this month, fail even to be included in most conversations about movies. Sure, they're not Oscar contenders, but they certainly capture the black experience and yet, somehow, they're viewed as being less worthy of talking about than similar fare like Enough Said, which has earned many plaudits.

not endorsing this podcast, but it mentions you're write-up there, Alfred: http://www.soundonsight.org/12-years-a-slave-and-all-is-lost-sound-on-sight-podcast-368/

In which Richard Cohen learns some things.

it mentions you're write-up there, Alfred

It mentions me? Thanks!

Your*

how embarrassing...

My wife, not much of a movie-goer, out of nowhere asked if we could see this Friday night, and I pretty much said no. The last time she did this was when the hype around the hamfisted theater of the horrific "Precious" was high, and I said no to that one, too. Now, the pedigree of this movie is much stronger, but it still seems like the last thing I want to see. Am I wrong to just say no? I told her she was welcome to see it herself, but it does not seem like the sort of movie I'd want to sit through with her. I'm not sure I'd get anything out of it beyond feeling miserable, which I pretty much do, anyway, whenever I think of slavery. I'd rather read the book, as the tragic roots of America seem like something that would be better sussed out internally, personally, not collectively, surrounded by hundreds of people sitting in a theatre.

You should see it. It's certainly not Precious.

Odie and Steve take it on: http://bigmediavandal.blogspot.com/2013/11/black-man-talk-12-years-slave.html

[McQueen is] brilliant at suggesting how long a minute can last, though wobbly at depicting the passage of years, which matters here.

yeah this is exactly my thought. the film is hard-pressed to really suggest the years that have passed. i think this is a basic screenwriting problem that could have been solved pretty simply.

that said i think the film is pretty amazing. it's a lot better than it had to be, at the very least.

also, alfred, although i like your writing a lot, i have to say i disagreed with almost everything in your piece on this film. i also was kind of taken aback by what I perceived to be its condescending tone.

re. suspense: we can know the "ultimate" outcome of a narrative and still experience suspense, surprise, etc. surely this is why we can rewatch alfred hitchcock films countless times and experience the same emotions each time. philosophers know this as the "paradox of suspense." but i do agree that the film did not expend a lot of time or energy manipulating those emotions, at least not once solomon is sold to epps.

i also don't see melodrama as a bad object, and i'm not sure why you would. i also wish you would define your idea of "melodrama" since there are as many definitions of that term (most of them ahistorical) as their are critics. you seem to use the word in a wholly negative sense, which surprises me.

inevitably a film like this is designed to "manipulate," which is to say to give rise to, our emotions. that mcqueen would use the resources of melodrama to generate emotional effects seems to me neither surprising nor essentially objectionable. i think we can object--without denying the psychosexual ravages of the institution of slavery--to the way mcqueen perhaps excessively psychologizes the cruelty of slavery in the almost psychopathic figure of epps. he is perhaps too easily a villain, redolent of the (yes, melodramatic) conventions of the abolitionist ex-slave narrative, one of which is of course the source for the film. but compared to most hollywood "issue" pictures mcqueen's film is a model of intelligent restraint and complexity. i do think it provides a good, though hardly a complete sketch of slavery as an economic institution, which to my knowledge no other American film on the subject has done.

i really don't grasp your objection to the scene w/ alfre woodard. i do think that the scene felt a little truncated, but that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at. her character initially presents a pointed contrast to patsey. she imagines patsey could follow in her footsteps, manipulating the slaver's affections and desire to achieve a much better position; but she discounts, or doesn't recognize, how decrepit epps's moral sense is. of course, she recognizes her situation for what it is, and makes clear her bitterness and moral clarity. maybe she seems to have too complete a consciousness, too lofty a viewpoint, for someone in the thick of history. but I don't think she really functions as an audience surrogate, providing an ahistorical perspective we can feel comfortable assuming ourselves. if that's what you are suggesting.

when you write that the film doesn't really want to touch the issue of the "pleasure of giving pleasure" to one's abusers... I couldn't disagree more. maybe its not the film's most explicitly stated theme, but it's very present and it would take a truly oblivious viewer not to pick up on it. indeed, solomon and clara (I think that's her name; she's the one who is separated from her children at auction in new orleans) have a conversation about this very thing. and i was frankly started by the way the film reminded me of some of the more perverse, insidious aspects of relations of power. solomon and others do, indeed, seem moderately pleased to do their masters' bidding even if that pleasure produces an almost immediate nausea. it all reminded me that slavery is an extreme expression of power imbalances that seem to inhere in all societies (i'm not gonna be a good leftist and write "capitalist societies" b/c I think this sort of thing is endemic even in primitive societies).

i feel like you were reviewing a different movie from the one I saw.

Good response, am.

I can't answer every point at the moment , only this: i do think that the scene felt a little truncated, but that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at. her character initially presents a pointed contrast to patsey. she imagines patsey could follow in her footsteps, manipulating the slaver's affections and desire to achieve a much better position; but she discounts, or doesn't recognize, how decrepit epps's moral sense is. of course, she recognizes her situation for what it is, and makes clear her bitterness and moral clarity. maybe she seems to have too complete a consciousness, too lofty a viewpoint, for someone in the thick of history.

You're right about the last point. So brief is her appearance and so fraught with importance that I got frustrated at the movie's reluctance to grapple with what she represented.

As for my criticism of the film as 'melodrama.' No, of course I don't object to it per se, but the arc of the story as filmed elided many of the book's complexities such that the results took the shape of what I call the triumph narrative. Epps in the book is not the same kind of monster that the script and Fassbender's predictable, monotonous performance suggest -- and, of course, I'm aware the book itself is a fiction.

I took it on faith that the reason I wasn't tearing up at the end was b/c McQueen had done a good job conveying the emptiness of his rescue against the bigger picture.

Well, I floated a second theory too, but opted for the first one.

and because Ejiofor isn't a group-hug sort of actor anyway (and neither is Solomon).

yeah, I think you can definitely read that scene in the tradition of "happy endings" that are anything but (see also "bigger than life," lots of fritz lang films).

i do think that for all the critical rumblings (or maybe there aren't so many?) this is one of the best best-picture winners in a while. at least since "no country for old men."

I think even those ambivalent about the mice would have to agree with that.

Movie. Not mice. Movie.

mice?

xpost

HA

i thought you were making some really deep reference to "babe"

I agree, and expect that is entirely a coincidence. xxxxp

I think "Gravity" would have been an even better choice, but who really cares. it's not like that movie lacked for critical plaudits (if anything there was even more of a consensus than re. "12 Years") or commercial success.

I was gonna say "best since The Hurt Locker"

"hurt locker," pfffff. not even near bigelow's best work, and falls apart on second viewing IMO.

more important: is mcqueen the first experimental filmmaker to go on and win a best picture oscar?!?!

except for peter kubelka's "crash," i mean.

I've made my peace with Gravity getting the consolation prize owing entirely to the face that now at least we've all been spared thousands of think pieces.

I'm still fond of The Hurt Locker but I haven't seen it a second time.

I've watched NCFOM a second time.

xxp you should see Kevin costner's student films

is mcqueen the first experimental filmmaker to go on and win a best picture oscar?!?!

Spike Jonze ascent arguably more surprising. Funny he would win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar the same year he also wrote "Bad Grandpa" (which also got an Oscar nom!!!!).

"hurt locker," pfffff. not even near bigelow's best work,

it isn't but is near the top of Best Picture winners.

to me that just means "not near Near Dark."

serious question though (re. is mcqueen the first experimental filmmaker to go on and win a best picture oscar?!?!)

xpost

i wouldn't put it near the top at all, not when you've got

7th heaven
it happened one night
rebecca
how green was my valley (best win ever)
casablanca
going my way
the lost weekend
best years of our lives (2nd best?)
an american in paris
gigi
the apartment
...this is about when things take a turn for the dire... but there's still:
patton
the godfather
rocky
silence of the lambs

near dark is great (though my students didn't think much of it), point break is good, strange days has its moments (though is intensely dislikable)... yeah I guess you can consider her overrated.

the loveless has its moments too. i think kathryn bigelow is very talented as an action director, but "hurt locker" was rather pedestrian in that respect. but as a PHENOMENON (powerful feminist director of male-orienated action movies) she is pretty singular.

anyway let's get back to 12 years a slave.

i make the whirly-crazy sign when the young Turks talk about movies like Point Break as "great" .. oh man, Strange Days too huh...

Going My Way is no Bells of Sy Mary's and The Lost Weekend is no Kiss Me, Stupid

Gigi? Oy.

Anyway.

gigi isn't the best of the best but it's an excellent movie!

and i left out good but not great stuff like all quiet on the western front, the sting, etc. i don't even think "hurt locker" is that good.

I just read Alfred's harrumph about 12 Years of Slave and man, Pauline Kael has a lot to answer for. :D

this was posted in November and it's terrific:

Odie and Steve take it on: http://bigmediavandal.blogspot.com/2013/11/black-man-talk-12-years-slave.html

I just saw Gigi again and like it too, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" is creepiest and it's over quickly.

I liked it! Kael wouldn't have seen anything with "Steve McQueen" in the credits.

Let's follow am's advice and confine Oscar chatter to this thread: vote for the best Oscar-winning Best Pictures of all time

yes, fine

haven't done my rewatch yet, so that's all i got

You can always put that ...

patton
rocky
silence of the lambs

... where your heart ought to be.

cross-posting from that other, more appropriate thread:

http://www.ofcs.org/the-best-of-the-best-picture-oscar-winners-part-6/

Pretty amusing juxtaposition:

22. Gone With the Wind (1939)
23. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

well they pretty pointedly didn't follow up the wizard of oz tribute with a gone with the wind tribute, did they? would have been pretty awkward.

am still waiting for the "young mr lincoln" tribute with rows of dancers in top hats and beards.

btw we all know John Ridley wrote and directed the imminent Hendrix movie starring Andre Benjamin?

Is it called 12 Minutes A Solo?

No, that's the title of the Yngwie Malmsteen biopic

So what is the rift between Ridley and McQueen about? Yes, as reported by The Wrap, McQueen did discuss sharing the screenplay credit with Ridley, who told me that he would have shared the story by credit if he could with McQueen, with Ridley taking sole screenplay credit. He had settled for a story by credit once before, when writer-director David O. Russell took the screenplay credit on "Three Kings." No rancor there anymore, as Ridley gave Russell, and not McQueen, a hug on the way to the Oscar podium. (Ridley also hugged "12 Years" producer Dede Gardner, who developed the script with him.)

Ridley explains that when a screenwriter adapts a memoir, the Writers Guild of America won't permit a story by credit--in this case, Solomon Northup wrote the true story that the movie is based on. As Ridley wrote the first draft for Plan B (on spec), it would be difficult for a director like McQueen to get a shared Screenplay By credit, which would require a WGA arbitration. "For both of us, I would have been happy to have Story By credit," says Ridley. "Steve never tried to get an arbitration. A lot of people assume we wrote the script together every day for four years. The reality is that Steve lives in Amsterdam and I live in Los Angeles. We met a dozen times at most. I can't say in all honesty that Steve and I had an opportunity to become super tight. It starts to bother me when the story becomes that we didn't give each other foot massages. Steve was never not deferential to me and I hope I always expressed admiration for him, the cast and crew. Steve did a lot for me. I don't know if Steve is upset. We got to have our moment. It was a beautiful moment for us."

Ridley points out that he thanked McQueen many times over the season, including the Independent Spirits the day before the Oscars, and that on the Academy Awards show, many folks omitted any mention of who wrote their movies. "We should have equal concern for people who did not get their due," he says. "People included me in this. I never got the sense that I should go stand in the corner." Ridley kept his 30-second speech short on Oscar night, thanking Solomon Northup. (Truth be told he was relieved that he didn't cry, something he tends to do.)

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/12-years-a-slave-oscar-winner-john-ridley-talks-rift-with-steve-mcqueen

i went into this with some dread but ended up really liking it. most of the things that people objected to i thought were either not-problems (the passage of time) or really great (zimmer) or probably just plainly true (pitt's canadian laborer)

sarah paulson is just crazy good. nobody in it was bad at all except maybe pitt, who isn't exactly a bad actor but just seems like someone who's unfamiliar with the act of talking

boring oscar-bait pabulum imo.

― tell it to my arse (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:18 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh, fuck you. we have "folk heroes" saying shit like this dude, and this shit doesn't even surprise me in the slightest. we need people to make movies like this. people need to see movies like this. if some "oscar-bait" film gets a large number of people to think about 400 years of slavery that basically happened about 5 minutes ago in our history, i'm pretty happy about that.

anyways, i thought it was really good. agree with some of the criticisms upthread, especially re: brad pitt (who as an actor is just too distracting for any film) and the lack of portrayal of other slaves besides solomon and patsy. i also feel like it could've been an hour longer, for sure.

the movie does an excellent job in showing how the first owner is both "nice" and perhaps even "liberal" (in a formulation I'm not sure is entirely anachronistic) but also totally complicit in the perpetuation of the institution of slavery. i think that's one of the most remarkable things about the film, especially a film that won the best-picture Oscar.

this is otm, too.

I think the full visceral effect of the point that J Hoberman and others have latched onto--that in a culture of slavery "there is no 'why'" and Solomon's liberation is as arbitrary as his enslavement and does nothing to diminish the horrors of the institution--may have been partially lost thanks to the film's ending. you can give credit to the screenwriter and director for believing that the audience will not take the ending as an affirmation of the rightness of the world, but rather consider those who were not liberated--and still wonder if most of the actual audience lived up to that respect.

yea, i was certainly thinking about patsy and the others who were left behind, standing around as solomon looks back from the carriage, but i think that effect could've been made a lot more powerful if the other slaves were more developed as characters in the film.

re: solomon's lonerism, the fact that we didn't really see him interacting much with other slaves (besides patsy and the woman earlier, eliza?), was definitely somewhat of a fault. at the same time though, i kept thinking about basically all the other slaves, born into this, will die into this, and solomon has this whole other existence that he continues to have some hope of returning to even amidst moments of great despair, and that to settle into this life would to be to surender that hope. obviously that scene when he stands silent during the slaves' song but then joins shows his acceptance taht he's there and not going anywhere, and it's a rare moment and that's what made it so powerful for me, at least.

yeah the scene with him falling into (not 'breaking into' as we usually say) song is key

i find it kinda weird and sort of reprehensible that any mainstream movie that deals with any remotely serious historical subject gets dismissed as 'oscar-bait,' as if you could class this movie with something like 'the king's speech' or whatever.

i agree

also for all the criticism the pitt character gets (either b/c he's a "white savior" or b/c he's brad pitt), i kind of thought this was interesting, from http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/17/_12_years_a_slave_true_story_fact_and_fiction_in_mostly_accurate_movie_about.html:

Bass (Brad Pitt)

As unlikely as his character is—an abolitionist in Louisiana, and a contrarian who everyone likes—Bass is drawn straight from the book’s account. His argument with Epps (“but begging the law’s pardon, it lies,” “There will be a reckoning yet”) is reproduced almost verbatim.

The real Bass, in fact, did more for Northup, sending multiple letters on his behalf, meeting with him in the middle of the night to hear his story, and—when they initially got no response from their letters—vowing to travel up to New York himself, to secure Northup’s freedom. The process took months, and Northup’s freedom eventually came from Bass’s first letter after all, so the movie understandably chooses to elide all this.

One of ILX's most hated film directors looks due for some awards!

You can say that again,

https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/steve-mcqueen-knighthood

Most hated title not in danger.

nobody in it was bad at all except maybe pitt, who isn't exactly a bad actor but just seems like someone who's unfamiliar with the act of talking

― goole, Monday, March 24, 2014 3:58 PM

I miss goole