Review of 12 Years a Slave (2013) by Judahjsn — 25 Jan 2014

This movie is just torture porn masking as art. It asks no questions and really doesn't make any social comment. All it does is elaborately illustrate the human capacity for cruelty, ignorance and sadism - but from the safe vantage point of a couple of centuries' distance from the cruelty's context. Zero Dark Thirty asked a question: what if we had spent all that money, effort and talent on, say, decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, rather than a single manhunt? Prisoners asked a question: even if torture seems the only option, what can it do to us if we use it? Even Her asks questions, about our relationships to machines and each other. 12 Years A Slave simply pushes our fear buttons. All of us have an engine in us of past injustices that we can draw on at a moment's notice. 12 Years just puts gas in that tank. If you're going to make a movie that simply says "this is an atrocity," than why not make it about one occurring on our planet right now, that we can possibly still do something about? Because that would be taking sides, and would make some people uncomfortable. There is a form of entertainment where useless righteous indignation is stoked for its own sake. For that to work we must all be in agreement. Nazis, child molesters and slave owners. Those are the only boogeymen we can all still agree on. Think about the movies getting the most praise at award's season. Two of them deal with historical accounts of racism. Three if you count the Mandela biopic. Mud is a much better film than Dallas Buyer's Club, but Dallas Buyer's Club depicts (without saying anything new about) homophobia, decade's old misconceptions about AIDS and a bit of Big Bad Drug Industry for good measure. Plus McConnaughey lost weight for the role. So that's what gets the attention. One is more gentle and thought provoking. One triggers our fear. So that's the "issue" movie. Even Philomena takes a swipe at the catholic church's cruelty masking as piety (again, using the vehicle of a many decade's old instance of systematic abuse).

Anyway, 12 Years made me very uncomfortable. But not morally uncomfortable. Just uncomfortable at the sense the director was getting off on all that CGI blood spatter and whipping and hanging scenes that carry on far longer than needed to make their point. Points for nice cinematography. Hans Zimmer essentially reprises one of his themes from Inception in the score. Ejiofor is perfect. Brad Pitt is tone deaf as ever, but he produced the thing so...