12 YEARS A SLAVE- Page 4

[DAME]

Posted: 1/30/14 at 6:19pm

"I don't think it holds a teeny tiny candle the size of the one you put on a birthday cupcake you buy for somebody at work at the last minute because they reminded you at lunch that it's their special day to the central performance of 12 years. "


Come again?

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/30/14 at 6:24pm

Cuaron is a master at pacing. McQueen is not.

Cuaron had less to work with in his story. It's all about the direction and Bullock's performance. McQueen had a very powerful story, and sometimes it was like watching paint dry. Other times, it was very powerful. He's an uneven director.

EDIT: And Growl, I liked Gravity WAY more than I liked Avatar, which is the biggest, dumbest movie I've seen in decades.

Updated On: 1/30/14 at 06:24 PM

[DAME]

Posted: 1/30/14 at 6:33pm

Agreed.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/30/14 at 8:17pm

Besty- I can definitely understand that especially as Gravity, due to where its setting is, feels in a constant state of motion, very structural but it came from his headspace. McQueen and Ridley choose when to put the film into motion in showing the various experiences from Solomon's perspective and I can understand when stuff slowed down a bit that had McQueen go into visual artist mode (finding out that both he and Nicolas Winding Refn are dyslexic added a lot of context both of their whole directorial choices and visual scope- except McQueen for better or worse never tries to go with an original script like Refn usually has- Drive, his most mainstream film, a stark exception), I can understand why that would feel inconsistent and not as strong as Cuaron. I think finding any modern director who cites Dreyer, Vertov, Eisenstein, and a lot of silent film as a stylistic influence yet himself applies it to modern style than go for Guy Maddin-pastiche can be playing with a lot of fire.

I still defend Ridley's adaptation of the book. The academic part of me was astounded by how much thought Ridley and McQueen put into the female characters. I found it pretty feminist, for one thing. This film does not feel like they are simply looking at this book and acting like that and that alone is their studied text. Stuff like the Alfre Woodard scene feels straight out of Toni Morrison.

Updated On: 1/31/14 at 08:17 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/30/14 at 10:42pm

Your last point took my breath away. I never thought of it and it's exactly right.

Updated On: 1/30/14 at 10:42 PM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 12:16pm

"Cuaron had less to work with in his story. It's all about the direction and Bullock's performance. McQueen had a very powerful story, and sometimes it was like watching paint dry. Other times, it was very powerful. He's an uneven director."

Mostly agree with you best12. Cuaron's direction beats McQueen's for me hands down.

But I think the biggest difference comparing the two movies isn't the direction, it's the scripts. The script of Gravity may be a minor accomplishment, certainly incidental to the power of the movie itself, but it still served the movie in a very satisfying way. Whereas the script for 12 Years A Slave did not; actually I find McQueen's direction of 12 Years far superior to that movie's script; the book is extremely powerful material, and very cinematic, and should have been far better adapted. The book is far richer in its characters and far more like a great movie in plot and irony and even in action.

Personally, judging only by what I've seen so far (which doesn't include Nebraska or Dallas Buyers Club) I'd give the oscar for direction to Spike Jonze (with the Coen Brothers being a close second). But they weren't nominated. Of those nominated that I've seen, my favorites are Cuaron and Russell.




Updated On: 1/31/14 at 12:16 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 12:30pm

Having not read the book, I couldn't figure the adaptation into my opinion, but it's great to hear from someone who has. Thanks for the insight.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 12:39pm

I could see why some stuff changed, not so much the situations but the telling of it, from the text. Let's remember this text was written to sway people into the abolitionist movement. It's like adapting Uncle Tom's Cabin or Upton Sinclair's Oil! that became There Will Be Blood, these texts were polemics of their period.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 12:50pm

Have you read the book, strummergirl, or is that just a general comment?

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 1:43pm

It's not so much the polemic nature of the book, which seems to be all there in the movie, that I responded to and thought was much more cinematic than what appeared on screen, it's, for example, the individuation of the slaves as characters, Solomon's escape into the swamps, the great scene in which Bass is confronted with Solomon's rescuers and doesn't trust them, so many things that jumped off the page to me and made me think this is great movie material. I found the movie, thanks to the rather strange choices made in the script, as a whole surprisingly cold and disaffecting.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 1:43pm

I read the book years ago among many others in studying slave narrative. I think the film did a really good job of telling the story. As was mentioned these narratives need to be examined within present and past context. A lot of them were written very matter-of-factly and leave little room for artistic adaptation. I don't think this really succeeds artistically it played more like a Lifetime film to me (which is A-OK) unlike the mega-underrrated Beloved. I really want to see a film made about Ukawsaw Gronniosaw.

I'm probably going to get berated on here but the film and the performances didn't blow me away. It certainly falls in the genre slave narrative films and is probably one of the better ones. I think the most shocking thing about this film to me is how people are reacting. There have been some really brutal slave films made before, such as Mandingo which goes a little extreme but at least accurately portrays the systematic rape and sexual torture.

It's really unfortunate how ignorant the public is about a very real brutal past. I cannot believe these narratives are not required reading in high schools. I loved Amy Poehler's joke on the matter:

Amy Poehler: One of the most nominated films this year is “12 Years a Slave.” I loved “12 Years A Slave,” and I can honestly say that after seeing that film, I will never look at slavery the same way again.

Tina Fey: Wait, how were you looking at it

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 2:17pm

Adding to what you've said, finebydesign, I grew up on Roots, parts 1 and 2, and I think they are better written and directed than 12 Years a Slave. The acting is equally as good. The production aspects (considering it's over 30 years later) are far better for the recent film, understandably. But as a powerful, narrative on the same subject, Roots (especially the first miniseries) is better all around.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 2:36pm

I read it high school, besty. It has been a while but I know of Northup's history being that Saratoga is in close proximity to where I live. So when I see that postscript and people disappointed we didn't get to see that story of Solomon, let me tell you the reason why there is still a working Solomon Northup historical society is because there is quite a lot of history of him that still needs to be searched and may never be found out. To me that postscript is kind of tragic in that even the most exceptional slavery experience has so many dots to connect still.

The film is very disciplined into one perspective, Solomon's narrative. Only Patsy gets those individual scenes set apart from Solomon that to me was a conscious choice and vital in connecting the roles of various women in the slave experience that I am not sure all filmmakers and screenwriters would have made in the same position. Personally, I remember thinking Bass in the book was one of my least favorite parts of the book, I read Uncle Tom's Cabin before so white outsiders were feeling a little bit in the way of this. The film contrasts Bass to Armsby, where the issue remains if Solomon can actually trust this white person who can leave that plantation to tell people that he is alive. Add in how the whole abrupt moment he can leave is no different from the abrupt moment he is in shackles at the beginning. They are bookends for how at the time one can lose and regain their personhood in that period in America. I get the choices, but I can see had there been a different director that certain things would be different. I just do not feel like the film was cold but I definitely found it strange and unique in finding a real-life Grimm fairytale.

Beloved fits more of a epilogue of slavery, with the system and holocaust of that history as a ghost, apt given I really don't get 'slave narrative' films as a 'genre' as there are definitely not very many films. Gordon Parks did a Solomon Northup TV film (that I still need to see given I love Gordon Parks' films), a Beloved adaptation, Roots, Amistad, Mandingo, and Django Unchained. Those really are the only ones I know and I would love if there were more and hope there are more after this.

EDIT: I don't really think stuff like Roots and 12 Years a Slave should be in competition. It's like asking The Pianist (which I think 12 Years a Slave compares quite well to) to be in competition with Schindler's List. I think they're both great in very different ways and UGH I hate that the next slave film is just a Roots remake by the History Channel that I hope stalls in production. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman are RIGHT THERE.


Updated On: 1/31/14 at 02:36 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 2:49pm

I think it's sad and horrifying that we don't know what happened to Solomon Northrup. His disappearance years later is disturbing, to say the least.

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 3/3/14 at 4:59pm

This is an article from the New York Times, published in 1853, about his disappearance. Interesting.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E03EEDC1438E334BC4851DFB7668388649FDE&smid=nytimesarts