It's Not Stealing If You Do It From Yourself

12 Years a Slave

starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Adepero Oduye, Sarah Paulson, Lupita Nyong'o, Paul Dano, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti and Brad Fucking Pitt.

directed by Steve McQueen(!) (Hunger, Shame, probably some other things named after feelings with one word titles)



In my previous life, I used to spend some time in film criticism. It was a little different from normal film criticism as I haven't ever taken any classes on film history or film theory, so some of the deep context that a reader might have found useful had the piece been written by some member of the big-shot newspaper cognoscenti might have been notably absent. Also, they were about movies I had not seen. So mostly they were just launching points for me to skip along the surface of popular culture, work in a dick joke and shut the computer down in time to watch reruns of Deep Space Nine on Spike TV in the late morning. I miss being a housewife.

I kind of edged back into it a little bit a couple of weeks ago with my discussion of Afternoon Delight, but I approached it with a refreshing twist: I totally saw that one! So naturally I had very little idea what to say about it. In rereading that post, I mostly ignored the film and used it as a platform to launch into a pandering pre-emptive supplication to the coming tide of World Lady Domination. But look, I'm down to writing once a week. There are so many groups to pander to, I've got to get it in when I can. When our mongrelized nation finally shatters into warring gender-ethno-sexuality tribal city-states, I want to make sure I get my name out there to as many factions as I can, ASAP. You don't want to be the last one picked when those teams start forming up, man. Being the only straight white dude living in the male gay South Asian leather-fetishist utopia built around the smoking ruin of Fresno does not sound like my idea of a great way to spend the rest of my short, uncomfortably seated future. Nobody should have to endure Fresno.

I see other movies too now as well. Being divorced with shared custody means I have time to do shit. Being part of a couple means that sometimes you find yourself in the position where you are able to force your partner to do shit with you. If you're like me and movies are your thing, going to a movie with another person means you get to walk out of the movie and talk about the things you just saw. I truly do enjoy going to the movies by myself* but I've always found it hard to get strangers to engage afterward, even if you try to impress them with your persistence, all the way to their car.

Going on the staggering, unanimous, rapturous aggregated reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I cajoled my Significant Other into accompanying me to a weeknight showing of 12 Years a Slave. Seeing as this was obviously an Important Film about a Very Serious Subject, I was bound to learn something. And I did: all those glowing reviews were written by white people.

Don't get me wrong, I love white people. Given the right conditions and a lot of oversight, they are capable of truly noteworthy things. But put them in charge of writing a review about something as deeply troubling and close to the core of the American soul as slavery and they seem lost. How many ways are their to write the word "courageous"? It can't really be that my date and I were the only ones who thought it might have been stunt-casted, poorly cast, inconsistently and moonily directed and tonally disconnected.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is someone who should have been a giant movie star a long time ago. Space opera is made or broken on the strength of its villains and he made 2005's Serenity, a film I did eventually get around to seeing. Now, that movie also had a lot going for it in terms of cast, script and direction, but it could have been an eye-rolling extended episode of a cancelled TV show without Ejiofor's judiciously interjected bad guy and a vivid, unforgettable bit of expositionary monologue-ing from Sarah Paulson (also in this movie, also should be a bigger star). His reward seems to be to pop up in interesting things from time to time and he gets mentioned as a possible James Bond or Doctor Who every time one of those gets recast, but that's about it.**

The dialogue lacked the period sharpness of Tony Kushner's Lincoln script from last year, which I had coincidentally caught part of the night before I saw this. It came across as stilted and sparse, missing a lot of opportunities. Some of the visuals were horrifying and vivid enough, but somebody has seen one too many Terence Malick films. Lots of close-ups of stuff, lingering past their basic, practical, narrative usefulness, but instead of the lyrical ruminations on nature or philosophy you get from Malick's silent pauses, we got a lot of unnecessary looking at stuff that started out as promising, but then dissipated all their tension by finishing with some weird, disruptive action that exposed the whole thing as indulgent and actory, exposing the machine parts like they're part of the show.

And the cast... I sigh. Either not up to it or poorly used. The one part that could have been the fulcrum point of the whole piece needed someone better able to pull it off than poor Adepero Oduye, an unconvincing cryer playing someone who has had her children stripped from her. Paul Giamatti seemed silly as a slave dealer. And Brad Pitt... fuck. It was a Plan B production, his production label. So he got to play the moral Canadian carpenter who saves the day. Canadian. With a twangy Missouri drawl. Asshole.

It's supposed to be about violence and dislocation and degradation and this collective burden of self-inflicted tragedy we are all responsible for bearing. Watch Lincoln. Even with it's awful, intrusive musical score, it says it better. Watch Roots again, with your kids/nieces/nephews/students/whatever. Watch Glory. Hell, watch Django Unchained. That last one was a cartoon, but it had something to say. Granted, 90% of what it said was the N-word, but look, Hitler wasn't murdered in a Paris movie theater in real life like at the end of Inglourious Basterds either. If you go into a Tarantino film looking for historical verisimilitude, you're likely to be disappointed.

Michael Fassbender is in that, too. Besides Ejiofor, in 12 Years he's the one who gets the most to do and is pretty much the only one allowed to unleash his full charisma, in the service of evil here and also blowing up scenery every time he wanders into frame. Also his legendary giant penis makes a brief, if clothed cameo. I didn't see Shame, so I admit I was looking for it. The rumors appear to be true. If you're trying to figure out if you should shell out the money to see this movie or not, I'd say you'd be a fool not to take that part into consideration.


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*It's always easier when you're the only one available to be disappointed by your choices. It also guarantees the Popcorn Trick is going to be a success.

**Until maybe Star Wars?!?!