Steve McQueen
12 Anni Schiavo

With that name, one could only be destined for cinema, but this McQueen, aside from having a different skin color, remains behind the camera rather than in front of it. A multifaceted artist with a passion for sculpture, photography, and the arts in general, McQueen has explored the prison and the solitary man's civil struggle in "Hunger" (2008), followed by the compulsive obsessions of sex in "Shame" (2011). His third feature film, "12 Years a Slave," which gathered 3 Oscars, is another cinematic piece where the English director delves into and explores the human body, mind, and soul.

1841, New York State: Solomon Northup (an excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free man with a wife and two children. The opportunity for a new job soon turns into an odyssey of pain and despair: away from his loved ones, he spends twelve years of his life moving from one plantation to another, from one job to another, from one master to another.

The theme of slavery, the man in chains, and the condition of African-Americans are among the cinematic "leitmotifs" of recent years. Addressed from various perspectives and through different styles, they have characterized the work of many Hollywood faces: Tarantino with "Django Unchained," Spielberg with "Lincoln," Lee Daniels in "The Butler," Tate Taylor in the splendid "The Help," up to "Selma" by Ava DuVernay. In years when the call for dignity from the black community in America is resurging strongly, these themes have become unavoidable and a source of inspiration and commitment, even for leading names in world cinema: within this analysis of the condition of African-Americans, "12 Years a Slave" is the title that most anticipates the problem and perhaps more than others examines the subject from an anthropological/historical angle. McQueen brings to the screen the life of work in the fields, situations of daily exploitation, the desensitization to pain, and paints a fresco that is first and foremost historical. Rarely has the life in the reality of plantation slavery been so vividly depicted for the big screen.

For the first time, Steve McQueen steps back from the screenplay (handled by John Ridley), which is not the film's fundamental element. To exaggerate, one might say that "12 Years a Slave" does not have a precisely defined plot: it is a succession of events and situations experienced firsthand by Solomon, turned "Blatt." Much like Robert Bresson's poor Balthazar, Solomon moves from home to home, "friends" to "friends," remaining constantly in physical and mental suffering. This is one of the film's most successful aspects: McQueen's narrative never softens but rather displays a harshness with "European" traits. Despite being a feature that heavily emphasizes drama, McQueen never seeks sentimentality for its own sake, and the brutal whipping sequence of Patsey (an extraordinary Lupita Nyong'o) is a gut-wrenching blow that leaves no room for hope. In "12 Years a Slave," moments of pity for the protagonist are virtually absent. Successful in this sense is the choice not to show relationships of friendship among the slaves, all too absorbed in trying to survive to think about helping others. Patsey is also an element of rupture and not conciliatory: a scandalous object of desire for the slaver Edwin (a great Michael Fassbender), but also a vehicle of further moral trials for poor Solomon. (SPOILER - note the "contrapasso" he must endure: first, he refuses to kill Patsey as she pleads, then he is made to whip her at Edwin's behest).

McQueen's third work is a manifesto of classicism. It suffers from an excessive didacticism of plot and screenplay, but it's the film's structure that brings forth the lyricism of the images, of bodies, and faces marked by toil and streaked with tears. Those faces, without which the film would not have had the same impact: "12 Years a Slave" is above all a film of actors, and McQueen confirms himself as a great attractor of acting prowess, as well as a filmmaker with undeniable directorial talent and staging (note the various editing cuts with a Malickian aftertaste).

Without striving to be a grandiose work but equally steeped in vintage classicism, "12 Years a Slave" emerges as one of the most successful historical/biographical/political titles of recent years. McQueen does not depict the dichotomy of black-good, white-bad. He works on wounds, on bodies, on the weaknesses of the human being. His is not a work of protest against the "white oppressor," but a broader fresco inviting us to consider what humanity is in its entirety.