I've been eagerly awaiting this film since I first saw its trailer this past summer. I remembered the book vaguely, as I'd come across it in passing while in undergrad. I'd taken a class, Early African-American Literature, wherein the reading and discussion of slave narratives and autobiographies were the topic. But more than my passing interest in seeing a book I'd kinda heard about years ago up on the big screen, was my desire to see a film that would try its best to authentically capture the tortures and dehumanizing aspects of slavery, that peculiar institution. Hollywood doesn't seem to ever do it right. Maybe that's because it knows America, post slavery, only ever wants to forget it. Films depicting this topic in any kind of realistic way don't tend to fare well at the box office, and so, not many are produced. And when the great Celluloid City on the hill does decide to tackle race relations between black and white, it's usually some watered down version designed to leave everyone feeling comfortable and satisfied that horrible things and people are punished, and all is now right with the world, thanks to that Great Emancipator...and JFK.
And while I was sitting in that darkened auditorium, surrounded by strangers (many, many strangers), I prepared myself for some really intense images. Something told me from jump, that this wasn't gonna be The Help, or Remember the Titans, or The Blind Side, or some cartoonish piece of film fakery ala Django Unchained (though as I type this, I fully admit that I quite enjoyed the revenge tragedy that was Django, if only to see a slave exact some cruelty and retribution of his own).
I'd never heard of the director Steve McQueen prior to this film, despite having seen his second film Shame, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The only other encounter I'd had with that name was the old school actor of the movie Bullit fame, his son Chad (of the original The Karate Kid--he played Dutch, the other blond psycho of the film and one of Johnny's Cobra Kai brothers. Damn I love that movie. And Ralph Macchio! Daniel-son forever!), and his son Steven R. McQueen of The Vampire Diaries tv show (I no longer watch that mess, but yes...I did). Clearly I'm very acquainted with this particular family name and their projects. So, while I didn't think there was another "famed" McQueen member named Steve who was also a director, I kinda thought there was a relation. Which is to say, I assumed this director was also white. And that troubled me. The thought of a white man taking on the subject of slavery...it felt like it was gonna be The Help all over again. And since I knew the director, like many actors in the film, was British or at least European, I was very worried.
Imagine my surprise to learn that Mr. McQueen was indeed...black! I can't call him an African-American, as he's not American...so I guess, an African-Britain? Just black then. Well that certainly made it a horse of a different color! And thank God for that!
Rightly or wrongly, according to some, I totally disagree with white people's ability to tell black stories effectively. I just don't believe that a white filmmaker or screenwriter can accurately capture what our struggle, our story in this nation is and has been. Through the lens of white guilt or entitlement, our most noble features and attributes come across as laughable and cliched. So the silent strength of a black woman enduring the indignities of constant rape and physical abuse, become eye roll inducing and expectant. Of course the black woman will endure. She's strong as an ox. That's what she does. We continue to be dehumanized in our own stories and the white masses can't recognize that, because to them, they're seeing a story or telling one of great depth and pride. They don't notice their own condescending tones that permeate throughout.
It was also curious to me that a significant number of actors in very pivotal roles, including the lead, were not Americans. Including the director himself. And so, I wanted to see how a group of folks would perceive the legacy of racial discord that exists within a country not of their own. How they would depict our ugliness; and would it be possible for outsiders looking in to do so. Kinda like watching the older, yet somewhat physically diminished sibling trying on the ill-fitting clothes of the seemingly more attractive and bratty younger one. Watching these actors take on our history--a history not their own; and wear it comfortably as though they grew up with it in their bones, as we have--is something I find both intoxicating and fascinating. I should also say, that I feel the Brits are the best actors on the planet. That's just my personal bias. They come from a country that has a storied history of celebrating the arts and its artists for generations. Us...not so much here across the pond.
What I found compelling about this film, is how much it made me feel. The brutal scenes of violence were unrelenting. When you wanted the director to cut to another scene or another angle to alleviate the horror befalling your eyes, he refused to do so. He put it in your face and forced you to acknowledge the dirty, little secret that still festers in the core of this nation. A white woman was sitting beside me in the comfy recliners of the AMC theater. And not fifteen minutes into the film, shortly after Solomon Northup's abduction, she bolted. Nothing cataclysmic had even occurred yet. He was tricked, passed out, and woke up in chains. She made a lot of "umm's" and "oh my's" just at seeing that. I knew she wasn't long for this film, and that if she stayed, things were gonna get increasingly more difficult for her.
And listening to her annoyed me slightly. Not just because I'm a movie Nazi, which I am, but because I felt that since she knew she was sitting next to a non white woman, that maybe she needed to really demonstrate how appalling she felt everything related to slavery truly was. As if her audible recriminations would absolve her in some way of being white, and therefore, being associated with this monstrous circumstance. I, of course, rolled my eyes (internally) and watched her put her shoes on (she'd taken them off during the trailers, why I have no idea), un-recline herself, get up, and briskly exit the theater. I took a sip of my soda. None of the black folks at my side stirred at that moment. That wasn't the treatment that got us. Unfair and duplicitous as his captors were, it's not unlike the life we still live here in many ways. We're used to a certain degree of unfairness in America. So watching a man be duped into slavery and waking confused and chained to the floor, and then beaten for his questioning insolence, was par for the course as far as we're concerned.
This film gives me much to ponder about the current state of race relations between black and white in America. It goes without saying that this country deals with it, by not dealing with it. Not in any truthful way. That we had an opportunity way back then, and threw it away. That in many significant ways, life for blacks here is not that different from the lives we led back then. Sure, it's unlawful for us to be owned and beaten openly, but as Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Yusef Hawkins, Michael Griffin, Emmet Till, and countless others attest, we're far from being seen as equal and legitimate citizens of this country. The election of a black president, while monumental and something that certainly couldn't have happened back in Solomon's time, hasn't changed a thing. He has been met with open vitriol and disrespect in a way no other president ever has been.
But the thing I find the most unchanged, is the depiction of black life in film as it specifically pertains to this issue. Movies, in particular, that deal with slavery are usually muted. And movies that deal with black and white in non-slavery films, but that still touch on the inequalities existing between the two, are equally watery. I think it's because since the nation hasn't dealt with the problem in a real sense, films are usually hesitant to tackle the issue head on. Rarely have I seen any race movie give it to us full on. There's usually some type of can't we all just get along kinda thing goin' on. That whites and blacks can eventually work it out. And audiences find comfort in that, yet, that's not true. We haven't really been doing that. I get that it's a hope. A dream. But like Herm Edwards says a dream without a plan is just a wish.
I saw the white characters in this film walking around cloaked in the skin and privilege of white entitlement. The security that their white skin affords them. And how that security emboldened them to walk wherever they felt like, and do whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted. And seeing them know and understand that their white skin protected them from any number of atrocities the world could heap on them. Something they never thought should be extended to others bereft of that same skin. Seeing the complete disregard for the men, women, and children around them that I share an ancestry with, fueled the annoyance I felt at the white lady who couldn't even stomach the moderate discomfort of an intolerable cruelty in the first damn act.
I left this movie feeling that while I'm physically free, and would in no way want to compare the cerebral acts of racism and intolerance we deal with today, to the actual brutality of slavery that my ancestors endured (so that I could in fact, one day BE), I do fear that I may never live to see the death of white entitlement. Not in America.
Till next time, lovers!
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