Callum’s review published on Letterboxd:
12 Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, an intelligent, free man kidnapped and sold into an unimaginably cruel and painful life and his quest to regain his freedom. Now, that sound's a lot like the plot of The Shawshank Redemption and that's the story that kept coming to mind as sat through this film, only in a sort of desperate hope that something would happen to help me find a connection with this story.
I don't understand how a film that is so clearly full of talent can be so un-engaging and such a chore to watch. Despite Steve McQueen's obvious talent as a filmmaker, as this film is gorgeous and meticulously made, 12 Years a Slave fails to provide any emotional drive for the watcher. Yes, I care that this man has been so awfully wronged, but anyone with any decency can see that, but if we're to follow this man's life story I need him to have something more. Early in the film Solomon claims that he doesn't want to just survive, he wants to live, but this is never really shown and for one reason or another, Solomon as a character becomes un-engaging and tedious.
This film is full of fantastic actors who all give there all in perfomances that feel like they don't matter because the characters have so little effect on the story. Michael Fassbender's lunatic religious zealot of a plantation owner is a vile character played with full conviction. He's given a huge amount of screen time, but is ultimately pointless as his story goes nowhere and he has almost no drive towards the conclusion of the main plot. Brad Pitt's character, who is extremely important plot-wise, is thrown in during the final act and has maybe 10 minutes of screen time. This meandering, unbalanced weighting of characters may be truthful to the source material but really does not lend well to a film plot.
I don't mind a bleak film. David Fincher's Se7en is one of my all time favourites, and it's a film that makes me feel physically ill every time I watch it because the atmosphere it creates combines so well with its plot that the dread of the finale is almost suffocating. 12 Years a Slave has an intensity to it in many parts, but its an intensity that only acts to further drive the viewer away, as there is so little emotional investment in any of the characters. This leaves even the most emotional sequences with an understated, isolated feeling and before long I found I was simply bored by the whole experience.
Maybe I wasn't meant to find any great revelation or triumph in this film. Maybe it was the quiet study of a man who wanted nothing else than to get back to his family. Maybe it was an exercise in simply showing the monotony and grimness of the subject matter, maybe their are people out there with less human decency who don't already know or understand this. Maybe it's aimed at them, though its understated tone doesn't lend well to a preaching agenda. Whatever the answer, 12 Years a Slave will not be a film I will be revisiting any-time in the near future.