"The critical reception of this film tells us more about the relevance of The Trans-Atalntic Slave Trade to Contemporary Society, than the film itself".
"Only as Creators! It has caused me the
greatest trouble, and still causes me the greatest trouble, to realize that
what things are called is unspeakably more imortant than what they are. The
reputation, the name and appearance, the importance, the usual measure and
weight of things each being originally almost always an error and arbitrary,
thrown over the things like a garment and quite alien to their essence and even
to their exterior- have gradually, by the belief therein and the continuous
growth from generation to generation, grown as it were on- and-into things and
become their very body. What was appearance at the very beginning becomes
almost always the essence in the end and operates as the essence! What a fool
he would be who would think it enough to point out this origin and this
nebulous veil of illusion in order to destroy that which virtually passes for
the world namely, so-called " reality "! We can destroy only as
creators! But let us not forget this either : it is enough to create new names
and valuations and probabilities in order in the long run to create new
"things".
Nietzsche
We have a black man in the White House ,or the 'big
house' as Tarantino might have it, completing his second term as the president
of the United States of America. As Spike Lee would say, this is 'what
time it is'.
We've had 'Django Unchained', Tarantino's
acclaimed satirical take on the subject, but that film as it turns out, was
only an hors d'oeuvre; this film '12 Years A Slave', based on the true story of
the same name written by Solomon Northrop, the historcal African American at
the centre of it all, is the film 'they' want 'you' to see.
Directed by acclaimed black British director Steve
MQueen and starring acclaimed black British actor Chewitel Ejiofor, it's a
straight retelling of the experiences of free black violinist, Solomon Northrop
following his kidnapping and selling into slavery, as described in the book he
himself wrote.
The story takes place during a period when slavery
is abolished and it is illegal to obtain 'new' slaves. This led to the
kidnapping of free black people for the purpose of keeping slavery going.
I'm ever keen to view art as art and to not let
emotions get in the way of assessing it, but I feel that this attitude is
particularly important when talking about this film, not only because of the
potential for personal emotional involvement with it, but also because the
director is an acclaimed and Turner Prize winning artist, a true autuer if ever
their was one. The lead is also a 'thesp' having won the Olivier award
for his stage portrayal of Othello. Thus, this promised to be art in it's
purest form, devoid of commercialism and sentimentality. My experience of
watching 'Hunger', Steve MQueen's first feature length outing as a film-maker,
only served to heighten the promise. It's surely not possible for a film
to be more uncompromising and 'arty' (in the best sense of the term) than that
one. By turns spellbinding and repulsive with a totally dominant and
bewitching performance by Michael Fassbender in the lead role as Bobby Sands,
the film made me begin to question the very idea of film as an art-form.
Everything I'd watched up until then seemed somehow trite. I felt
it all slightly fraudulent in comparison to this stark piece by a true artist,
a true observer and interpreter of reality in all it's elusiveness.
His second film 'Shame' was also critically
acclaimed so I had high hopes for this latest offering, the most critically
acclaimed of all his three (count' em, three films).
The first thing to say about the film is that it
does the important job of giving Solomon Northrup's story and book their
historical due.
The second thing to say about it is that it's
critical reception says more about the issues that the film is ostensibly about
than the film itself. There is a sense of a void needing to be filled,
just like Schindler's List filled a void, a need to attach oneself to the
vehicle that will finally bring absolution and reconciliation. And there
is a belief that awards and recognition for two of the most talented black
artists in film today, will go a long way to achieving all of this.
Perhaps this belief is not misplaced. The dream ticket of a black
director and black lead alchemising an artistic victory on screen while dealing
with the subject of slavery, and being critically recognised for it, may well
go a long way to healing wounds that are so old that they are a now part of us.
But as Brad Pitt's Achilles said to Brian Cox's Agamemnon in 'Troy',
'first you need the victory' and it is probably due to the fact that those
aforementioned ancient wounds remain profoundly conjoined with the enduring
sense of ourselves, that this victory, I'm sorry to report, remains elusive.
Appearances would seem to suggest all is well
though. There is MQueen's customary flamboyance from behind the camera,
his beautiful shot making, but it is strangely sanitised within a Hans
'Zimmer-ed' 'Spielbergesque' movie vehicle. This is where the source of
the problems begins; the film doesn't know if it is a sentimental Spielberger
or a 'McQueenite' 'challenge' to sensibilities and this confusion only serves
to neuter both approaches (which can both be effective in their way). For
all McQueen's undoubted talent with a camera in his hand, it's obvious that he
is slightly out of his depth as the director of a major Hollywood movie,
(because make no mistake, that's what this is, the recruiting of Hans Zimmer to
score the film confirms that). One wonders, did MQueen really want to
make such a film or did he feel the weight of influence from some of the
figures behind the scenes mentioned in Armond White's iconoclastic review;
Harvey Weinstein, John Ridley et al, pushing his pet project towards
'hollywoodisation' and the harnessing of his poetic and uncompromising prowess
with a camera, to produce a work that would enable liberal whites to engage in masochistic
catharsis with angry blacks? Hmmmmm. The film lacks a clear narrative
structure (something that perhaps a conventionally trained director with more
experience would probably have provided, if at the cost of some virtuoso
shooting) and the direction of the cast leaved much to be desired ; the
innocence of the black characters and the evil of the whites involved is too
close to caricature.
MQueen may argue that 'it's all very close to
Northrop's book' but he shouldn't need to argue this, making reality palpable
is part of the responsibility of the auteur. A case in point is
Fassbender's Mr Epps. Does anyone really believe that Fassbender's dandy
portrayal of the sadistic plantation owner -which was at times almost Monty
Pythonesque- really existed in that form? He needed his director to tell
him to tone it down a bit. Having said that, other performances were more
measured and subsequently more menacing when they needed to be.
Cumberbatch's conflicted but ultimately compromised benevolent slaver
gives perhaps the most poignant and relevant performance opposite Ejiofor's
sounding-board of a central protagonist, exclaming to him at one point, 'you
are an exceptional nigga, but I fear that it will be of no account!' Paul
Giamatti's turn as a cruel and hardbitten slave auctioneer was also spot-on,
making the role relevant to today in someway, implicating all of us, something
that speaks volumes about his personal skill. Such performances, along
with some of MQueen's shooting (the scenes of the slaves at work singing
as they go had a hypnotic quality at times) constituted the films high points,
but they were too few in number and there was not enough of a sense of true
director's vision to make this the film that everyone wants it to be.
Much
of the film seems, I'm afraid, largely irrelevant, about very nasty people doing very nasty
things to 'remote' people, people we can no longer really recognise or relate
to, though portrayed in handsome black performances and captured by fine camera
work. Critics have lauded the brutal realism of the film and it's true
that the film's unflinching realism is a significant achievement, but while
lauding it, we must also ask, what does this graphic portrayal teach us?
Were we really only waiting for a camera honest (and sociopathic even)
enough to show us these grisly realities before we could be finally
healed of the festering wound that is the legacy of the Transatlantic Slave
Trade and the diseases associated therewith? I think not. So
despite the promises to the contrary, the film clearly has very little to do
with us all here, now, today. In terms of culturally relevant and
inspired programme-making on the subject, there is nothing here that outstrips
'Roots' or 'The Colour Purple'.
Just to add some context to what you may feel
at this point is an unnecessarily withering and dismissive review, I watched
for the first time Olivier's Shakespearian Othello a couple of weeks ago and
found the production absolutely jaw dropping, disturbing and universally
implicating. Olivier's portrayal of an exceptional black man in Venice,
'fresh off the boat' (as he chose to play him), based on the Bard's impossibly
engaged and relevant material, towers above 12 years... as both art and a
commentary on modern race relations. How is it that a man writing towards
the end of the Medieval period in England and a posh white man acting decades
ago (daubed in shoe polish for Gods sake), could get so right what we, in our
'enlightened age', continually seem to get so wrong?
In addition to the
rampant caricaturing and one-dimensionality of the characters in 12years....,
the 'distance' of the film is also due to the fact that Northrop's story
effectively takes place in post abolitionist
America so that all the racism is
basically perpetrated by god-fearing hillbillies in the south (Cumbercatch's
and Fastbender's characters for example spend a lot of time quoting scripture
and its notable how the religious faith of Pitt's character, the one man who
had the courage to help Northrop, was notable by its ambiguity or even
absence). This won't do as a message or a moral. This obviously is not the fault of the story or the film, but
in view of this, the clamour there seems to be to make 'this' film the
definitive slavery epic, is puzzling and perhaps reflects the belief held by
certain sections of the liberal white elite, that racism is generally
perpetrated by the uneducated and the uncultured and that what is perhaps most
offensive about racism is it's inherent stupidity. The kidnapping part of
the story is also problematic in this regard, allowing the central narrative-
that of a section of humanity choosing to subjugate another on an industrial
scale, in relatively modern times, due to racial difference- to become
conflated with modern problems such as sex-worker trafficking, which while
important and deserving of attention, have no relation whatsoever to historical
Trans-Atlantic Slavery. Sex worker trafficking cannot help us to explain
the recurring mystery of the burgeoning black prison population, unfulfilled
black potential and the preponderance of fulfilment taking place within the
spheres of entertainment and sport when it does occur, Trans-Atlantic Slavery
however, can begin to do this. As such the film does almost nothing to
address or redress racism in its present form. The kind of racism
that underpinned the legislation that enabled the Transatlantic Slave Trade as
opposed to the brutal racist sadism that it gave rise to. A racism that
surely still persists not least in the form of unfair world trade and
persisting (up until very recently anyway) third world debt, even as the
'northern hemisphere' nations continue to live off wealth that could not have
been obtained without slavery while preaching to the world about human rights.
Tarantino's Django... was more effective in, unveiling some of these persisting
injustices and contradictions though satire.
One thing that may have made the film more
effective is to have seen more of Solomon's pre-slavery life so that it could
be more violently contrasted with his subsequent experience of slavery.
Instead, Northrup's pre-slavery life is rushed through in about 20
minutes and we have no real sense of the person he was so that we can relate to
him.
And so to return to the Nietzsche quote at the
beginning of this piece. We seem intent on disregarding reality to
fulfill our purposes not only in this case but in all our cases, from foreign
policy to environmental issues to press regulation. It has become such a
way of doing and a way of being with us that the roots of reality gets lost
under layers and layers of our own projections, until finally we are unable to
distinguish truth from falsehood and dream from reality.
The dream of the current elite intelligentsia is
to finally get this 'racism' monkey off its back, and as such they seem
desperate to shower recognition on a film that does not really deserve it, as
well as confer upon it a significance that is unwarranted within the context of
the continuing wider discussion on the relevance of not only the Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade, but also colonialism and other related historical phenomena, to
contemporary society. Rather than see things as they are, they would
write the history of the future so that the era of world's first black
president of the USA should read as having been more than a token occurrence.
I too would like it to read so, but it is wrong to
manipulate facts to suit ourselves. The American Film Academy had
its chance to recognise the 'dream ticket' of black director, lead and 'Black
issue' film when it emerged in 1992. Spike Lee's Malcom X starring Denzel
Washington would have been a worthy winner of the best director and best actor
oscars back then, but the time (and perhaps indeed the subject) was not
'deemed' opportune. Instead, Al Pacino won the best actor Oscar (for
Scent Of A Woman) which was really an Oscar that he should have won several
years before and possibly several times over for other previous work, but was
denied for reasons
best known to The Academy (anti-Italian bias?).
So injustices give rise to further ones.
Call me cynical, but I sense that this is really the story behind the blanket 5
star reviews (one of which describes it as one of the best films ever made) and
Oscar campaign for '12 years a Slave' which is why it will probably win.
This tells us more about the state of our society than any film ever
could.
I could be wrong though, the seats were
uncomfortable at Tate Modern where I was honoured to be among the first to see the movie at a special preview (I had to pay of couse for the privelege!) There was no popcorn and the 35mm print format
seemed incongruous (in a way that it didn't seems so for Django). I will
watch it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment