dvd of the week
Steve McQueen’s remarkable 12 Years a Slave is based on the 1855 autobiography of Solomon Northup, played in the film by the great British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. Solomon was born free and educated in upstate New York, and while his wife and children are away, he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. As a man used to being treated with respect by whites, he is astonished by his treatment by the slavers: taunted, beaten and beaten again. The performance of Ejiofor is impeccable and impressive, as are those of Lupita Nyong’o, as another slave, and Michael Fassbender, as their disturbed owner. All were nominated for Oscars, as was director Steve McQueen, a British video artist turned feature film director, who makes Solomon’s story, as adapted by John Ridley, into both art and a historical warning. He never flinches from depicting pain and shame, from the act of vicious beatings to its physical toll, and he elicits performances from his actors that resonate these experiences far beyond what would seem to be possible with acting. His visuals – from tableaus of slaves blankly listening to their captors to Louisiana landscapes at dawn and dusk – are unnervingly beautiful counters to the horrors of the human drama.
