12 Years a Slave (2013) Review

5/5

Call me what you will, but I'm going to say it: 12 Years a Slave is one of the best films ever made. Allow me to explain.
The subject matter is brutal and often hard to watch, and for that some audience members will come away saying they did not enjoy it. It is fair to not enjoy the film, but it is not fair to define it by its violence. What you must judge in the film is the filmmaking finesse, the incredible sense of direction and pace that Steve McQueen has and shares with us time and time again in films such as Hunger and Shame. Both of those are great, and would be considered masterpieces in a lesser director's repertoire. Here, those two and this one make for a filmography so incredibly diverse and breathtakingly flawless that he must be considered one of the great filmmakers ever to live.
The cinematography by Sean Bobbitt is nothing short of revelatory, integrating long shots and handheld where necessary, strung together by beautiful portrait-esque compositions that highlight the beauty in this otherwise ugly world. When the film makes you want to look away, you won't be able to. It's that perfectly shot.
The acting is so heart-wrenching and pure and true that it seems a trivial exercise to write about it any further. I cannot express the emotional highs and lows that these characters make you feel, and it is difficult to put into words how much they pull off and how effortlessly they do it. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, and Michael Fassbender get special shout-outs because they not only convince you that they have inhabited the characters completely, but they restored my faith in the kind of actors who embrace risk-taking as an art and for that they must be awarded. The entire cast though, truly, hits the mark ten-fold.
The script by John Ridley is a perfect soul searcher and it appears to be effortless; it is so epic and contained at the same time that the dialogue alone is often enough to send chills down your spine.
The rest of this year still has several big films from big directors to offer, but if they all were to tank and disappoint the masses, I do believe that audiences fifty years from now would consider 2013 a great year for film because this bona-fide masterpiece found its way into cinemas and changed the people who experienced it.