Film Review | 12 Years a Slave

Rising-star British director Steve McQueen may just be a one-hit-wonder after all. Though his latest film - the self-explanatory 12 Years a Slave - has been nominated for a healthy wad of Oscars this year, the former video artist - and winner of the Oscar-equivalent for UK visual arts, the Turner Prize - once again betrays a near total inability to tell a story, instead coasting on the visual impact of his scenes to carry him through.

In a way, this is worse than being bad: McQueen's sensitivity for portraying the suffering of the human body, coupled with an eye for visual detail and an ability to paint rich, precise settings - aided by regular cinematographer Sean Bobbit - are probably unmatched. So you're left with pretty pictures moving to no rhythm; a frustrating situation for any viewer.

Based on a real-life account by free-born black man, Solomon Northup, '12 Years...' is a harrowing picaresque of misfortune and torture. Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was a relatively well-to-do New York carpenter and fiddle player who was drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery - allegedly by two men who were offering him a job as part of a travelling circus.

So begins Northup's hellish journey from New York to New Orleans and further into America's 'antebellum' South, as he is jostled between one master and another. He finds some respite after being sold from his first buyer, Freeman (Paul Giamatti) to the compassionate Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). But Ford's tranquil household comes with a vicious worm: carpenter and ranch-hand John Tibeats (Paul Dano), who resents the eloquent and resourceful Northup - now renamed 'Platt' - and resolves to harry him at every turn.

Finally snapping, Northup attacks Tibeats. The incident turns out to be a near-deadly turning point for our protagonist, as Ford is left no choice but to sell him. But the market isn't friendly to rebellious slaves, which leaves Ford with little option but to pass Northup on to Edwin Epps (Micheal Fassbender), a self-proclaimed "nigger breaker" who, as Northup discovers to his horror, more than lives up to his moniker. A Bible-thumping sadist with a penchant for alcohol and erratic mood swings, Epps's only respite appears to be an abusive relationship with a young female slave, Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) - much to the chagrin of his wife (Sarah Paulson) who appears to be as malevolent as her husband, though her rage only simmers on the surface.

Going by press interviews, it's clear that McQueen - working off an adaptation of Northup's original novel by John Ridley - is proud of having made an entirely 'uncompromising' film about slavery. Glancing at recent treatments of the same theme, it's hard to argue against this particular aspect of 12 Years a Slave. Last year's Lincoln and Django Unchained fall short of depicting the horrors of slavery with the same rigour, for example (the former mostly focuses on a change in governmental policy, while the latter gives audiences the gift of swift and brutal retribution).

But the problem with depicting ceaseless horror is that after a while, the audience will just shut off.

If McQueen's aim was to shock people into awareness - read: empathy and pity with a historical episode whose full implications are often ignored - he has only succeeded to a point. What sadly results is less an artful and penetrating look into the way slavery functions and more of a litany of horrors that betrays an uncomfortable (and almost certainly undesired) stylistic link to the 'torture porn' genre, which can count the likes of Saw and Hostel among its representative franchises.

That's not to say that McQueen's visual skills can be put into question at any point during the film; close-ups of sumptuous bayous and lush, verdant landscapes stretching across many of the plantations where the film's horrors take place are testament to his signature style.

Neither do any of his performers let him down. Save for a blunt and one-dimensional cameo from the film's co-producer Brad Pitt towards the film's end, the cast is on top form.

Ejiofor deserves all the accolades he may get - his emotional register throughout the film is 'pained' but he still manages to portray a wide spectrum of emotion, often even without the recourse to dialogue.

But Nyong'o is the real discovery here. Hers is a role that could easily have been reduced to shrill dramatics. Instead, the Kenyan actress ekes out total sympathy for her plight - an impressive feat for a film already fore-grounded with suffering whichever way you look.

A lot of praise has also been going towards McQueen regular Michael Fassbender... but save for a few character tweaks here and there Epps plays out like a pantomime villain.

Fassbender's presence is also a reminder of McQueen's back catalogue. It doesn't make for a flattering memory. Hunger (2008), detailing the physical collapse of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, played to his artistic strengths through and through. But Shame (2012) - a clinical dissection of the life of a New York sex addict (also played by Fassbender) was a disjointed exercise in po-faced moralising.

While he has a mastery of the image, McQueen remains an inadequate storyteller - an unforgivable fault for a historical drama like 12 Years a Slave.