12 Years A Slave In Review

\Last post I promised some palm trees, and I do not intend to disappoint, but I would also like to serve up a review of a film I saw last night, namely 12 Years a Slave.  It's an incredible film with art direction that puts director Steve McQueen into the same artistic pantheon as Rossellini or Bergman and is a much needed dose of reality in an age when popular images of the plantation era are given off as something of slapstick racism at best or a romantic confession at worst.  As we celebrate the victory over chattel slavery won at Vicksburg and Gettysburg this very year, we ought to be mindful that such fighting was far from merely over some sick, twisted defense of States' rights.  Yes, there were many underlying causes of friction between Union and Confederacy, but ultimately, to claim that slavery was not the source and summit of cause for a nation being torn apart is a fundamental disrespect to a very painful and sacred chapter in the history of humanity.  

And oh yes, there are palm trees, and an absolutely incredible look at the American Southern landscape, or at least the low country therein.  In following the kidnapping and enslavement of freedman Solomon Northrup, the film takes us from the upper Hudson Valley in New York down to Washington (past an incredible shot of a human being made into property, fittingly, under the shadow of the temple of the United States Congress.  From then on we get to see quite a bit of the Deep South in low country Louisiana, complete with palms of the Sabal genus, magnolias, baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum), Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana), and an absolute TON of Spanish Moss (Tillandsia Usneoides).  Now normally, this is among the most lovely setting of vegetation anywhere on this earth.  Everything is green, lush, luxuriant, and yet not overly confining so as to create an overbearing jungle.  

A street somewhere in Beaufort, SC.  While this is a semi-cultivated landscape (I noticed that among ordinary neighborhoods gardens and planting were allowed to flow without a lot of pruning), you can tell from the trees and shrubs that neither canopy nor sky reign supreme on their own.  We will revisit the general concept in a later post.  Everything just looks organic, flowing, and relaxed really, like much of the South.

Yet for the most part in the film, McQueen has set out to have the camera fix on a focus and lighting that makes the whole thing look sickly and tired.  Instead of incredible drapes of moss, we see trees festered in it along with baldcypresses, tupelos, and magnolias that are defoliated and gangly.  This compliments the plantations where Solomon, now re-named Platt (which can mean, for Louisiana especially, flat in French or alternatively an old word for silver in English), gets pushed around to.  With the exception of Mr. Ford's manse, we hardly see grand, polished estates.  The houses are dirty, the interiors are sparse, and even the masters of the manor are looking a bit disheveled.  There are stomping forced dances rather than graceful ballrooms full of lovely dames and debonair gentlemen.  The whole set up does little to implore the viewer to lament the tragic romance of a soon-to-perish Antebellum South.  Once Mr. Ford is removed from the scene, any semblance of that lovely imaginary world vanishes, house, people, landscape, and all.  

But we did see a little bit of that in this film, which McQueen uses to great effect to prove a point.  Solomon gets treated well, the landscape looks a bit more inviting (even while things are in a swamp along the Red River and we see little of cotton picking, cane gathering, or other typical agricultural ventures).  We see the slaves clearing a little land, constructing buildings, even encountering some of the First Born who were wandering the last vestiges of what they could find before Europeans totally changed their world.  The action is that of exploration, encountering a new, albeit uninvited world.  Things look more exotic than sedate New York or distressingly urban Washington, and definitely more relieved than stressful slave market New Orleans.  We see a decent plantation with a well-mannered Ford and a true-to-form, if insensitive, lady of the house.  Solomon's talents are appreciated, and he sets into survival mode while also thinking about escape.  Overall, it seems as if things could be a lot worse.  We see construction and creation.  Feeling complacent?  We are reminded very sharply that for all his generosity of spirit and apparent gentility, Ford is still a slave owner who treats people as property.  As such, we also see our first overseers and start hearing "Nigger" almost every other line.

The swamps then start looking less luxuriant and more nauseous, those broad-limbed oaks start looking more like little other than convenient lynching posts, and the moss and palmettos start reminding us that this place is hot, uncomfortable, and malarial.  Moving on to the next plantations, we see less of a settlement with slavery-made-possible ornamentation and more of a series of work farms meant to use humans purely for profit.  Notably, in the shabby houses and clothing of the owners, we see very few fruits of such overwhelming profit, as if to say that even could slavery be economically justifiable, it simply has not fit the bill even then.  Speculatively, this makes one question just how much wealth really got passed around at the expense of an entire race.  We see a lot of labor, poverty even in the middle man plantation owners, and the fancy scenes of Gone With the Wind left only in the hands of a select few at the very top.  There is possible political commentary on present economic conditions here, but more than likely, this truly is reaching (this is slavery, a bit more intense than a wage issue...  right?)  Instead we go for less speculation and more reality and see that even the master of the house does not put on his Sunday best every day when things are 95 and dripping.  The house might afford a little mess during the cultivation periods.  See how many different ways things are already being twisted? 

If anything, that is what is supremely brilliant about this film.  Yes, we do see a lot of brutality and a cold bucket of water thrown at us in the face of a disconnect of 150 passing years of fading memory.  More so, however, we also see attempted justification for the rape of not just an entire people, but all peoples.  We get to see peace feelers trying to pave the road for a defeat for humanity.  Even when we see Patsy constantly dragged into the mud and slashed open within an inch of her life, completely broken and crying in some of the most emotionally honest acting ever seen...  we try to rationalize.  We can't though.  The music alone keeps reminding us that we are faced with something first and final about the way things are between people.  In the end we see one human being turn another one into something less than animal.  In the end, we have hope.  The moss looks graceful again and whitewash covers blemishes and dirt.  A man's soul stares into our own through eyes that should cause anyone truly humble to melt onto the floor.  My readers, go see this film.  Take your older children, or any children, that will understand even the mere difference between right and wrong.  I dare say it will awaken in all a new spirit of seeking understanding and exploration into not just North American, but human history in general and sympathy, if not empathy, for the suffering.  Would that there were films of this caliber for the other darker places in our continental history.  

In the meantime, check around here more frequently for a bit more of a look at the better side of the South.  If you do see the film, this might give you an appreciation for how McQueen managed to strip the veneer off the image.  After all, as God created her, the low country is a truly amazing place.