Rating: /5
Anti-Criterion Challenge 2024 | 47/52 | Screenplay adapted from a work of nonfiction
In 1853, Solomon Northrup told his story to David Wilson about how Northrup, a black man born free in NY, was tricked into going to DC, where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. There, he was in bondage for 12 years before being able to reach out to friends in NY, who secured Northrup’s release with the aid of the state. The book is vital in building a picture of what slavery looks like in the United States.
Per Steve McQueen’s request, John Ridley wrote a screenplay adapting the memoir that became this film. Having history and screenwriting experience, Ridley had the opportunity to expand Northrup’s work and bring into focus the institution of chattel slavery and the systems that upheld it. Instead, Ridley used Northrup’s horrific experiences as background fodder for a “romance” between white enslaver Edwin Epps and enslaved woman Patsey, as much as you can call their dynamic a “romance.” The film also invents scenarios out of whole cloth to instill further how “real” slavery was.
This latter effort has received the most praise in Steve McQueen’s film. I use “real” in quotations because the film seems only concerned with the what, not the why. In the process, it implies that racism was only a problem in the South and that the South was an intrinsically evil force that did not represent the US as a whole. Though unintentional, the film also suggests that Northrup did not belong in slavery while those he saw around him did.
The film ignores the systems at play that not only perpetuated slavery then but do so now through the carceral system and the racism intrinsic to the institutions that uphold it. It reduces the system of oppression to the sadism of individuals, which grants a collective burden lifted from white people’s shoulders. I believe this is why so many white filmgoers have championed this movie: because it showcases the horror of slavery without insinuating they have any role in its aftermath.
For more about Steve McQueen’s intentions, read his 2013 interview with Vulture
For more in-depth analysis from people much smarter than me:
- We Can Be Heroes: 12 Years a Slave, Schindler’s List, and the hero problem in American movies
- 12 Years a Slave Prizes Radiance Over Life
- 12 Years a Slave: It would be one of the strangest best picture winners in a long while
I’ve heard that Gordon Parks’s adaptation of Solomon Northrup’s memoir is more accurate and focused.