Toronto is such a movie-mad city that an 8:30 a.m. screening can attract a packed house. That was the case this morning at the press and industry screening of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, but of course much of the intense interest stemmed from its electric pre-Toronto showings in Venice and Telluride. For this writer, it certainly ranks as one of the most powerful movie experiences of the past few years.
12 Years a Slave is based on the amazing true story of Solomon Northup, a well-educated, free black violinist living with his wife and children in Saratoga, New York in the 1840s, who is drugged and
kidnapped by a pair of con men and sold into slavery. (Northup published the memoir of his ordeal in 1853.) What follows is searingly painful to watch, and supports Spike Lee’s argument that the jokey Django Unchained (however much a revenge fantasy) was in questionable taste.
McQueen likes to push boundaries, as he did in the scenes of prison brutality in his IRA drama Hunger and the edgy sex scenes in Shame. Here, the camera doesn't turn away from hangings and whippings, particularly in one extended take involving the brutal lashing of a young slave woman who’s displeased her psychotic master played by McQueen regular Michael Fassbender.
Watching 12 Years a Slave, one realizes that a feature film depicting the bane of slavery from the slaves’ perspective is a rare thing indeed. And thanks to British-Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s charismatic, quietly seething, fully committed performance as Northup, that perspective becomes immediately relatable to any viewer of this film, black or white or of any race. The injustice, the arbitrariness of cruelty, the suffering and the struggle to survive are vividly conveyed by McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley. And when those 12 years come to an end, I dare anyone to hold back the tears. I’m not ashamed to admit I was physically overcome during the film’s concluding scene.
Along with the many harrowing moments, thank goodness McQueen also includes a couple of lovely grace notes, each centered on a tight shot of the highly photogenic Ejiofor: one as he joins in the singing of the spiritual “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” the other a silent close-up as he ponders his future fate. Talk about putting a human face on a shameful American legacy…
After the devastation of 12 Years a Slave, something a bit lighter was needed. I rushed across town to the 11 a.m. Elgin Theatre screening of August: Osage County, director John Wells’ film of the
Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts (who also wrote the screenplay). This is one of the more successful stage-to-screen adaptations of recent years, capturing all the laughs and shocks of the play while opening it up rather deftly from the confines of the original’s multi-level house to the parched vistas of Oklahoma. (The tradeoff is that the claustrophobia of the walls enclosing the story’s bickering family is lost.)
Substituting for the excellent but not widely known Steppenwolf company actors who originated the play in Chicago and New York, some major marquee names have gathered for the film: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and Ewan McGregor, with able support from the likes of Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Abigail Breslin, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch and Sam Shepard. Shepard plays the family patriarch, a noted poet, who suddenly disappears after the first scene; Streep is his pill-addicted wife, an uncensored holy terror who’s battling mouth cancer. Roberts, Nicholson and Lewis are her three daughters: Nicholson is the responsible caretaker, Lewis the flighty one, and Roberts the one who fled the coop as soon as she could. When Dad is found dead, the family reassembles for the funeral and a dinner that erupts in cruel taunts and recriminations, many coming from the diseased mouth of Streep’s blunt and drug-addled matriarch.
The protean Streep knocks it out of the park again, nailing every uproarious laugh out of her devilishly mean and manipulative character. And Roberts, in her first pairing with Streep, rises to the occasion of those fierce arguments with the mother from hell. McGregor, in the film’s least rewarding role, makes a wan impression, but Cooper and Martindale make the most of their big moments, and Nicholson breaks your heart as the dutiful daughter with a big secret.
A number of Academy Award nods may materialize here, but one thing seems for certain: Get ready for Meryl Streep’s 18th Oscar nomination.
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