Based on the true story of one man’s fight for survival and freedom.  In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.  Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender), as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity.  Official site

Director Steve McQueen is an interesting man.

Not just because of his deadly cool name but because of the choices he makes and the projects he works on. He is a practicing artist, having been an official British war artist in Iraq and won the Turner Prize in 1999. He has an O.B.E for services to the arts and a C.B.E. for services to visual arts. He has made countless short films and just three features, all of which challengethe mores and traditions of filmmaking.

Hunger and Shame pushed the envelope in all directions and, in terms of what he chooses to put up on screen, 12 Years is almost the antithesis of those films. However it is neither a soft nor a comfortable film to watch.

McQueen is not Hollywood – Louisiana location filming took just 35 days … with just one camera. Apparently Kathryn Bigelow was shocked into nervous laughter when he told her. Ok, yes, the clouds-on-the-horizon shots are a teensy bit repetitive but I doubt anyone else noticed. The Louisiana he shows us is lush, fertile, beautiful, shabby and decaying. It looks lived in, worn down. The antebellum plantation houses look small and the slave quarters look horribly basic. However they look real. I could imagine people living and working in these places.

There has been lots of press about calling McQueen’s film anti-white, saying it vilifies all whites. It doesn’t, not does it glorify African Americans, but it does make the audience think about just how appalling it is that one human can own another human as property.

For all this it is a quiet movie – even though I watched several scenes with my face wrinkled in despair/distress. My husband commented that he had never sat in such a quiet cinema before. The audience didn’t fidget, whisper, laugh, gasp or leave. We all sat, we all took in this man’s story and we left, lost in thought.

It is not a film that trumpets the cause but one that takes you on a journey. There was not a sense of watching anything heroic, hilarious, gratuitously violent or soul wrenchingly tragic. I felt that I was watching a diary, come to life. One man’s experiences after being drugged and sold into slavery. It showed his choices and the choices that were made for him and it showed the smallness of his world as an owned human being. It illustrated his times but, sadly, also holds a mirror up to our world too.

The cast is wonderful – Chiwetel Ejiofor is Solomon. His role does not have the big notes of a film like Amistad or even Hunger but he is so much a part of the world he inhabits you could forget he is acting. Which I think must be much tougher to do that chew up the scenery. Michael Fassbender, who has starred in all three of McQueen’s feature films is excellent and Sarah Paulson is chilling as his wife.

However, the find of the film is an articulate young actor called Lupita Nyong’o. She is a Yale graduate and this is her first starring role, as Patsey – object of Fassbender’s character’s affection and malice. She has done theatre work but expect to see her in many more movies. She has great presence onscreen and off her African/American accent and ability to speak in complete sentences is beguiling.