Movie review: ‘12 Years a Slave' a terrific movie

Whoever designed the poster for "12 Years a Slave" should be reassigned to the mail room. The close-up photo of a black man on the run has nothing to do with the film it's supposed to be selling. No one is on the run in this movie. It's about black men and women in captivity, about slaves in the pre-Civil War South who are referred to as white men's property, are thought of as heathens. They're probably thinking about running but can't.

It's a searing story, taken from a little-known autobiography of the same name, about Solomon Northup, a violinist by profession who lived in Saratoga, N.Y., dressed well, was respected, had a wife and kids, and made a bad decision one day in 1841.

His family was going to be out of town for a while, so he accepted a brief gig in Washington, D.C., went there, played some music and made some money, celebrated with the show's producers, and woke up the next morning in a cell, chained, panicking, accused of being a Georgia runaway, facing the first of many beatings.

Soon he was no longer Solomon Northup. He was renamed Platt, sold into slavery on a Southern plantation, and left to wonder about what the hell happened to him.

This is a brutal film, laced with beatings, whippings, lynchings, generous use of the "N" word, and an air of hopelessness. It's the kind of film that, after hearing all of the above, might send some moviegoers running to some mindless popcorn flick instead. But that would be a mistake. This is a film that gives us characters who are brimming with dignity and a will to survive amidst the despair that surrounds them.

Early on, before his future travails are fully comprehended, Northup/Platt (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who starred in the film "Kinky Boots") is pulled aside by a veteran slave who advises him to keep his head down and not let anyone know that he can read or write. That, he's told, is the way to survive. "I don't want to survive," he screams back. "I want to live!"

But he has to survive if he wants to live. He has to clear his head of the flashbacks to better times that keep haunting him. But the despair never goes away. Ejiofor spends much of the film acting more with his sad, imploring eyes than with his voice, and he's brilliant at it (Are the people who do Oscar nominations paying attention here?) But there are plenty of other superb, yet only cameo-length performances all around him, from Paul Giamatti's merciless slave trader and Benedict Cumberbatch's relatively humane plantation owner to Paul Dano's blatantly racist plantation foreman and Brad Pitt's kindly Canadian abolitionist.

And then there's Michael Fassbender (Hello again to those Oscar folks) as Epps, the cruel and unpredictable plantation owner on whose cotton fields Platt eventually finds himself enslaved. Fassbender, who has been amazing in previous films by this one's director, Steve McQueen ("Hunger," "Shame") tops himself here with a complex and frightening portrayal of a man who viewers will fear and maybe even show a little sympathy for. His character's simple rule is that if you don't pick enough cotton, you get whipped. Yet he's also hopelessly in love with his slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o), but is so confused by his feelings, that he beats her along with the rest of his "property."

There are points in the film where watching the horrific goings-on is almost unbearable. Yet McQueen gives viewers a few respites with peaceful looks at nature and the landscape, similar to what Terrence Malick has been doing in his disturbing films for decades. McQueen also goes so far as to sometimes replace the sounds of whipping and crying with long silences, where only crickets and cicadas can be heard.

This is a deeply troubling, terrifically written, acted, photographed, and directed movie with a miraculously upbeat, if rather bittersweet ending. You'll be hearing lots more about it at Oscar time.

12 YEARS A SLAVE: Written by John Ridley; directed by Steve McQueen. With Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano. Rated R.