12 Years a SlaveDir: Steve McQueen
The Oscar for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards went to 12 Years a Slave, and not undeservedly. The film, directed by British filmmaker Steve McQueen, is based upon the true story of a free man named Solomon Northup who lived in New York, was abducted and sold into slavery in the mid 1800s.
The film is a heart-wrenchingly realistic depiction of slavery in the southern United States in the 19th century, its violence and language painting a vivid, horrifying picture of what the plantations were like and how horrid slavery was in both concept and practice.
In the film as in his own memoirs, Solomon is deceived by two men who offer him a professional stint as a violin player for a circus in Washington, DC. He finds himself in shackles and is subsequently beaten when he refuses to call himself a slave.
Over the course of his 12 years in servitude, he is bought by several types of owners, some more horrible than others. His one chance at freedom is to try to contact his family and friends back north to inform them of his dreadful fate.
The Guardian recently revealed that the film would be shown in all US public high schools as part of the American history curriculum, and I couldn’t agree with that decision more.
Moreover, the acting in the film is as moving and important as the script and directing. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Michael Fassbender are the star players – and while none is American, they have links to Africa or Europe, where the dreadful industry of slavery began.
Ejiofor, who plays Solomon, lays claim to both African and European heritage. He began acting in school plays as a teenager, and his first major role was in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad in 1996, another film depicting the shameful history of slavery.
Lupita Nyong’o makes her debut on the silver screen as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave. Truly multicultural, Nyong’o was born in Mexico City to Kenyan parents and raised in Kenya. She later moved to the US, graduating from the Yale School of Drama.
Michael Fassbender, meanwhile, has starred in dozens of American movies, but was born in Germany to German and Irish parents, and raised in Killarney. His connections with director Steve McQueen go back to the latter’s debut film Hunger, in which Fassbender played Irish republican prisoner Bobby Sands; they teamed up again for drama Shame in 2011.
The cast of this film, not to mention its non-American director, typify the globalisation of the American film industry in the 21st century. Hollywood has expanded its range of stars to include actors from as far afield as Australia.
And it’s a situation that’s beneficial to both sides, as Hollywood can always use more diversity.
Grace Wilson is a student at Boston University in the US currently interning with Metro Éireann.
