By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to 2013’s 12 Years A Slave, Steve McQueen’s critically lauded anti-slavery tract starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o.
In the middle of the tedious Hollywood backslap fest that was The 2013 Golden Globes, the usually painfully unfunny Amy Poehler actually said something amusing and surprisingly truthful. “One of the most nominated films this year is 12 Years A Slave. I loved 12 Years A Slave, and I can honestly say that after seeing that film, I will never look at slavery the same way again,” she said sarcastically, snugly encapsulating the futile, redundant nature of this critical darling.
Upon its release in 2013, the world’s film scribes literally wet themselves over 12 Years A Slave, a near unendurable two-hours-plus nightmare which not only allowed movie critics to show how excruciatingly “right on” they were, but also provided ample opportunity for them to use critically over-played descriptions like “poetic” and “harrowing.”
After making a boring movie about sex addiction, and an arty, passionless one about the IRA, Shame and Hunger director Steve McQueen (couldn’t he at least call himself Steven McQueen? Seriously?) delivered a film about how horrible slavery was in America’s Deep South. Sure, he should be congratulated for graduating from one-word titles with 12 Years A Slave, but if ever there was a subject that we already knew about, it’s slavery.
As if he’s marking ticks on a check list, Steven McQueen packs his movie fit-to-burst with whippings, rape, physical abuse, general cruelty and basic inhumanity, and even a lengthy, patience-testing lynching scene that’s so contrived that it feels like the arthouse version of a Michael Bay action sequence, or something out of Saw.
Most irritatingly, 12 Years A Slave features lots of allegedly great actors “going off.” Chiwetel Ejiofor is a charisma-free-zone in the lead; the awful Paul Giamatti merely recycles his performance from Tim Burton’s far superior Planet Of The Apes; Quentin Tarantino favourite and noted “weakest actor in SAG” Paul Dano gives a typically weak performance; Benedict Cumberbatch is his usual wimpy self; Ryan Murphy’s fave harpy Sarah Paulson goes over the top in horribly shrieking fashion; Michael Fassbender takes chomps out of the scenery and practically begs for awards as the villain; and producer Brad Pitt (a driving force behind getting the film made, which makes him a real villain of the piece) drops in for a cheap, not-much-doing cameo.
12 Years A Slave is a true waste of time. Yes, Steven McQueen, slavery sucked a massive set of balls, and we should all be very aware of that, but you banging us over the head with all the horrible details is like being stuck in a history class with a teacher who thinks that the pupils are all idiots.
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his angry missives against Red Dog, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Breathless, Elizabeth, Miracle On 34th Street, The Full Monty, There Will Be Blood, Les Miserables, The King’s Speech, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Magnificent Seven, Gone With The Wind, The Right Stuff, 81/2, Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, Jaws, Black Swan, Gladiator, Chopper, I’m Not There, Interstellar, Marvel Studios and Citizen Kane.
