12 Years A Slave (2013)

Based upon a book published in 1853, a memoir by Solomon Northup, this film brings the story alive in a direct manner. The narrative is simple; a free African American living and working in New York state is kidnapped and sold into slavery to a Washington slave trader and auctioneer. He is then sold on first to a benevolent plantation owner and finally to a violently malevolent owner. For 12 years, we see the story unfold via a series of brutal and honestly portrayed episodes that show us something of the total removal of humanity from one race of people.

The director, Steve McQueen, is also known as a Turner Prize winning artist. I recall one of his video installations which was a carefully crafted film of McQueen re-enacting a Buster Keaton scene. This is where the front of a wooden building collapses and falls on top of Keaton but he safely survives where he stands, appearing through the open door as it collapses upon him. The video by McQueen is shot from different angles to show the physicality of the action including the vibration ripples on McQueens face. Unlike the Turner Prize judges, I never “got it” and although it looked interesting – I passed on by.

Seeing this film, which has re-awakened the world’s awareness of the slave trade and slavery during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, I was fully aware of where McQueen was coming from as an artist. We see the physicality of the act of enslavement repeated from every angle until we ourselves in the audience are reduced and stripped, leaving our emotions bare.

The timing of the film’s release is appropriate. Gone with the Wind was released over half a century ago and it portrayed slavery in a benevolent non-violent way, a class ridden plantation pecking order where even slaves had status in their working ways. Last year saw Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in which we were invited to laugh at slavery from a white man’s perspective in a mock spaghetti western style.

On the day of the film’s release in Glasgow, the Herald published an article by Professor Geoff Palmer (Heriot-Watt University). He reminded Scotland of its one time economic dependence on the slave trade. He illustrated this with examples that we live with today all over Glasgow via its street names and buildings. Jamaica Street lies parallel with the River Clyde from where the slave trade was conducted. Not in the trading of the slaves themselves but in the output of their enslavement, sugar and tobacco. These two commoddities were economic foundation stones for three hundred years. In 1800 there were ten thousand Scots involved in running and managing this plantation trade in the West Indies. Professor Geoff Palmer has a Scottish name but he was born in Jamaica.

If this film does anything, it needs to influence the way we see our inheritance as a nation and how we respond to humanity in the 21^st century.