“12 Years a Slave” a Powerful, Disturbing Drama
By Skip Sheffield
There are several worthy new film releases this Friday. Standing head and shoulders above the rest is “12 Years a Slave.”
Be advised “12 Years” is not light entertainment. It is perhaps the most realistic depiction ever of slavery in the USA. Slavery is never a pretty sight or sound.
Interestingly, the two main forces of “12 Years,” director Steve McQueen and star Chiwetel Ejiofor, are from the United Kingdom.
“12 Years a Slave” is a true story based on the account of his abduction and enslavement by African-American Solomon Northup, published in 1853. The screenplay is by another African-American, John Ridley, who wrote the stirring tale of Tuskegee airmen in “Red Tails.”
Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was a free-born American man living in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1841 with his wife Margaret (Quvenzhane Wallis) and two children. One evening in Washington, D. C. Northrup was approached by two men with a proposition to earn big money touring with a circus show. The men plied Northrup with wine until he was quite drunk. When he woke up in the morning he found himself in chains and manacles. He was forced aboard a sailing ship bound for Louisiana manned by slavers, where he was sold to the highest bidder by Theophilus Freeman (Paul Giamatti).
That person was William Ford (British actor Benedict Cumberbatch), a Baptist minister who was relatively benign as slave owners go. Unfortunately Northrup ran afoul of Ford’s cruel, racist foreman John Tibeats (Paul Dano), who forced Northrup’s sale to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a disreputable, sadistic slave-driver if there ever was one. Epps’ wife Mary (Sarah Paulsen) was not much better, and she was particularly cruel to her husband’s favorite slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Patsey is the anguished face of total submission and humiliation, raped regularly by Epps and ordered whipped until lacerated and bleeding by Mary.
There will be many instances when you will want to avert your eyes, and perhaps that is the point powerfully driven home. Slavery was ugly and horrific and it was a tragedy it lasted as long as it did in the supposed “Land of the Free.” It is an interesting coincidence that Brad Pitt, who played a sleazy operator in the lousy film “The Counselor” plays the good guy, Canadian abolitionist Samuel Bass in this film. Michael Fassbender, who was also in “The Counselor” and two previous Steve McQueen films “Hunger” and “Shame,” pulls out all the stops in portraying one of most reprehensible villains ever seen on film. “12 Years a Slave” is strong yet still necessary medicine to remind us what tore our country apart a century and a half ago.
Four stars
Old Guys Have Fun Too
On a much lighter note we have “Last Vegas,” which is a silly situation comedy for the Social Security set, directed by Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”).
In light of his current marital woes, this could be seen as art imitating life for Michael Douglas, 69, now separated from his beautiful, much younger wife Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Douglas plays Billy, an aging confirmed bachelor who is the last of his Brooklyn gang to attempt a commitment to marriage. Impulsively at his Malibu mansion, Billy proposes to his girlfriend, who is less than half his age. This prompts his childhood friends to throw a last bachelor party in Las Vegas. This takes some doing, as Paddy (Robert De Niro, 70) has hardly left is New York apartment since his wife died.
Archie (Morgan Freeman, 76) lives as a virtual prisoner with his protective son in New Jersey.
Sam (Kevin Kline, baby of the group at 66) has retired, moved to Florida with his wife and is bored out of his skull.
The best I can say of “Las Vegas” is that it is funnier than I thought it would be. These guys are old pros after all, and though screenwriter Dan Fogelman’s script is creaky with old-age clichés, the actors seem to be enjoying themselves. The best thing about the film is Mary Steenburgen as Diana, a retired accountant who has decided to reinvent herself as a night club singer. Steenburgen, 60, is a wonderful advertisement for a woman aging gracefully- and she’s a darn good singer too.
Two and a half stars
Crooks Conspire in “Capital”
Hate banks and the white-collar crooks who run them?
“Capital” is a French film by legendary Greek-born director Costa-Gavras (“Missing,” “Z”) that will confirm your worst suspicions.
When the CEO of the French bank Phenix collapses and dies on a golf course, an ambitious underling named Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) is tapped as his successor.
Tourneuil thinks he is in charge, but he is just a pawn in the treacherous power games that ensue with the hostile takeover attempt from an American hedge fund led by ruthless, pitiless Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne). It doesn’t help that Tourneuil can’t help falling for exotic supermodel Nassim Liya Kebede.
“Capital” is Robin Hood in reverse. Bankers “rob from the poor to give to the rich.” As one of the characters notes, “They’re grown-up children.” This is fiction that is all too close to the truth.
Three stars
