Tuesday 14 January 2014

‘12 Years a Slave’ – Odeon, South Woodford - Sunday 12th January 2014

(Rated 6/5) 

Directed by Turner prize-winning artist Steve McQueen this film is a heart-wrenching work exhibiting the stark harrowing brutality of the world of slavery in 19th century America suffered by kidnapped former freeman Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and many others, in the form of a series of exceptionally beautiful moving works of art. Sean Bobbitt is the man actually behind the camera and I can only say that the actor artists involved in this must have had great trust and faith in both Bobbitt and McQueen. To say the work is up close and personal is an understatement, especially given what the actors are portraying so bravely and truthfully. Everything about their humanity both physically and emotionally is exposed to the core with exquisite truth and extreme openness.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is responsible for my all time favourite solo piece of emotive performance. He was exceptional as Othello at the Donmar Warehouse. If anything he surpasses that in this film. The expressiveness of his face, and the rest of his body, conveys all. There is no need for dialogue of which there is in fact little. And so often all and everything we get is him in close-up and the poignancy of his character’s feelings.
This is harsh and not for the weak of stomach, but so necessarily so to show us the reality of these experiences. Everyone is excellent and meets up to the standards set by Ejiofor, including Benedict Cumberbatch as a ‘nice’ slave owner – even though he seemed to forget his American accent for a time - and Michael Fassbender and Sarah Paulson as the ‘nigger-breaking’ husband and wife Epps with no compassion or sympathy whatsoever. Fellow slave, Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) gets caught between the Epps – raped by the husband and tortured by the wife for being her husband’s favourite. Sadly there is arguably even worse to come for her. The sensitivity of Nyong’o’s performance is also extraordinary given she is a newcomer – then again being from truth rather than acting it perhaps the best way to do this kind of work with then a great deal of support to recover from it!
I’m not sure I’d say it’s ‘must-see’ – but it is very important to see and for sure one of the best films made of those that I have ever seen!

(The front row of Screen 1 Odeon, South Woodford is too close to the actual screen for comfort!)


12 Years a Slave – Review by TheRestrictedReviewer © 2014

2 comments:

  1. Lupita Nyong'o just did an interview with Dazed and Confused, and I think you may find some of her comments interesting.
    On deciding to be an actor: “The first time I thought I could be an actor was seeing The Color Purple. Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I’d been starved for images of myself. I’d grown up watching a lot of American TV. There was very little Kenyan material, because we had an autocratic ruler who stifled our creative expression.”

    On using the Lucid Body acting method: “It’s about investigating your emotional make-up through your physicality. We store our emotions in our bodies.”

    On modeling her 12 Years a Slave character after Michael Jackson: “There’s something very Michael Jackson-like about Patsey – the childlike quality he always had. She had her childhood stripped away from her suddenly as soon as she became of sexual age.”
    Do you know anything about Lucid Body acting?

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  2. As Lupita says we do indeed store our emotions in our bodies resulting - at times - in severe forms of dis-ease in the body that can be cleared and healed by working on the person's underlying psychological issues - with a psychotherapist and in conjunction with body work or some form of physical body healing. An acting method that uses this is wonderful. I can appreciate how she modelled Patsey on Michael Jackson. And of course, arguably another person abused as a child who remained stuck in childhood ways. (He was certainly abused in ways we know about and my feeling is more than that. The important point - is he believed that he was and there's the damage.) A really powerful model for her to use.

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