NYFF 2013: Nine crucial pieces of dialogue in "12 Years A Slave"

Chewitel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender in 12 Years A Slave. The dia­logue they exchange in the scene pic­tured is taken very nearly ver­batim from the source material. 

Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, which played at the New York Film Festival last week and comes to theat­ers on the 17^th of October, is as extraordin­ary a film as most of its reviews claim it is. The act­ing and the dir­ec­tion are indeed remark­able, but I was also struck by John Ridley’s script, the dia­logue in which very con­vin­cingly sim­u­lates mid-19^th-century modes of North American speech while aug­ment­ing the already-powerful nar­rat­ive with extremely trenchant philo­soph­ic­al and psy­cho­lo­gic­al obser­va­tions, pro­nounce­ments, and max­ims. The implic­a­tions of these words, par­tic­u­larly with­in their con­texts, are extraordin­ary, and it’s to the cred­it of Ridley (an extremely able writer whose pri­or work as I’ve exper­i­enced it has been not­ably smart but nev­er acheived pre­cisely this level of depth), McQueen and the extraordin­ary cast that the nug­gets of dis­quiet­ing added value nev­er play as con­trived or forced. I record nine of them below, with descrip­tions that I hope are suf­fi­ciently dis­creet so as not to con­sti­tute “spoil­ers;” nev­er­the­less, some read­ers may prefer to look at this piece after they have seen the movie themselves. 

It’s worth not­ing that there is not a whole lot of recor­ded dia­logue in the first four-fifths or so of the Solomon Northup mem­oir on which the movie is based. What dia­logue is taken from the book is, as it hap­pens, lif­ted almost ver­batim. Of the nine bits of dia­logue examined below, two derive dir­ectly from the book, and it’s a test­a­ment to Ridley’s sens­it­iv­ity and invent­ive­ness that he makes his dia­logue not just out of such speech that’s recor­ded in the book, but out of cer­tain par­tic­u­lar emo­tion­al artic­u­la­tions put down by the memoirist. 

1) “The real­ity to come is that we will be trans­por­ted Southward.”

Shortly after free man of col­or Northup is hood­winked into enter­ing a slave state and sub­sequently drugged and kid­napped, he waits anxiously in a cell with a two oth­er black men who have arrived at a sim­il­ar cir­cum­stance. They both speak to him with an artic­u­late resig­na­tion, because they know what’s going on, to the extent that as soon as their bru­tal white hand­lers enter the room they put on the masks of sham­bling half-idiots. Northup expresses abso­lute incredu­lity at his plight and won­ders aloud as to how he might be able to cor­rect what he believes to have been a mis­take. The line above, in which the phrase “the real­ity to come” has a par­tic­u­lar res­on­ance in its resig­na­tion, is spoken to Northup  in a dev­ast­at­ing fatal­ist­ic tone by the act­or Chris Chalk, in the role of Clemens. 

2) “You lux­uri­ate in his favor. I survive.”

Also in Northup’s party trav­el­ing from Virginia to Louisiana to be sold is Eliza (Adepero Oduye), a woman who is sub­sequently mer­ci­lessly sep­ar­ated from her two chil­dren and sold with Northup to Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), an ostens­ibly “humane” mas­ter who nev­er­the­less employs a bru­tal over­seer played by Paul Dano. After the edu­cated and worldly Northup, while con­tinu­ing to con­ceal his iden­tity (on arriv­ing in Louisiana he is com­manded to take the name “Platt”), impresses Ford with his engin­eer­ing acu­men, he is treated in a fash­ion that makes his sta­tion some­what more tol­er­able, while Eliza, heart­broken over the loss of her chil­dren, lit­er­ally can­not stop cry­ing. She dir­ects the above accus­a­tion to Northup after he (very gently) upbraids her about her beha­vi­or, which he fears will bring her into dis­fa­vor, single her out for punishment. 

Not to trivi­al­ize the situ­ation of the people depic­ted in the motion pic­ture, but lux­uri­at­ing in the favor of an indi­vidu­al or cor­por­ate entity very much remains a con­di­tion per­tain­ing to employ­ment to this day.

3) “Whatever the cir­cum­stances, you are an excep­tion­al nig­ger, Platt. But I fear no good will come of it.”

Because of some con­fu­sion in my notes, I ini­tially wrote, “This is spoken to Northup/Platt by Epps (Michael Fassbender), the ‘nig­ger break­er’ to whom Ford sells Platt. Epps’ ‘fear,’ obvi­ously, is for Platt rather than for him­self. Or is it? As cut and dried as the master/slave rela­tion­ship might seem, this line implies hier­arch­ies with­in it that sub­sequent events lay out most dis­com­fit­ingly.” As it hap­pens, the line is actu­ally spoken by Cumberbatch’s seem­ingly kindly Ford, and is a reflec­tion of the fact that his very excep­tion­al­ism has put him in a pos­i­tion where Dano’s raging over­seer has very nearly lynched him. The point of Cumberbatch’s char­ac­ter, and some­thing the act­or plays with con­sid­er­able resource­ful­ness, is that he is in no way redeemed by being a nice slave own­er: he dir­ectly bene­fits from human misery, dir­ectly par­takes in a sys­tem that allows him to do so. That he goes about this busi­ness with more gen­tle­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion than oth­ers does not change the fun­da­ment­al fact of the mat­ter.  And like the song says, “isn’t he a bit like you and me?” Or more than a bit, even. The movie is not blunt in show­ing the view­er his or her com­pli­city in injustice, but it’s very def­in­ite in doing so. It seems that many people deal with this by chan­ging the sub­ject to how well the movie ought to do in the Oscar race, which is pretty funny. Maybe.

4) “Nigger among nig­gers. God gave her to me.”

This is Epps again, speak­ing of Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), the small, del­ic­ate but very hard-working (she con­sist­ently out­picks her fel­lows in the cot­ton field, and by huge mar­gins) slave girl for whom Epps nurses a very deep erot­ic obses­sion, and obses­sion not unnoticed by Epps’ wife (Sarah Paulson). His pride, his sense of pos­ses­sion, his tor­ture over his attrac­tion to her: Fassbender of course plays all this with abso­lute com­mit­ment. The char­ac­ter, also a very nasty drunk, is power­ful, and power­fully repel­lent. In an inter­view with Film Comment, dir­ect­or McQueen observes “The funny thing is, I have a lot of sym­pathy for Epps because he’s in love with Patsey.” That’s true, but it’s also true that there is no pos­sib­il­ity of any kind of fair exchange of emo­tion or under­stand­ing between them because of the abso­lute power Epps has over Patsey. One thing that’s gone largely unre­marked upon in the praise of this film is how mer­ci­lessly it lays bare the debased, depraved psycho­sexu­al patho­logy of slavery in the United States. Through patient demon­stra­tion, it argues quite coher­ently that the thing that des­troyed black cul­ture was white people. More than once watch­ing 12 Years A Slave I recalled Susan Sontag’s notori­ous 1967 pro­nounce­ment “the white race is the can­cer of human his­tory,” a state­ment sub­sequently renounced by the writer. It is argu­ably a hyper­bol­ic and rhet­or­ic­ally irre­spons­ible state­ment. And yet I think it bears some exam­in­a­tion with respect to this par­tic­u­lar nar­rat­ive. In any event, this may sound flip, but I defy any­one who sits through this movie to ever be able to com­fort­ably listen to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” again any time soon. 

5) “The curse of the Pharoah is but a poor sample of what awaits the plant­a­tion class.”

Alfre Woodard, play­ing a once-slave whose own amor­ous rela­tions with a mas­ter have elev­ated her to a house mis­tress, makes this pre­dic­tion in cas­u­al con­ver­sa­tion with Northup/Platt. For what awaits the plant­a­tion class, see, of all things, Gone With The Wind, spe­cific­ally the sequence depict­ing the burn­ing of Atlanta. To see the les­son the great great grand­chil­dren of the plant­a­tion class have learned from it, see…well, nev­er mind. 

6) “Did you beguile him, Platt? With your slick nig­ger ways?”

Once, many years ago at the Village Voice, the colum­nist Nat Hentoff, com­ment­ing on some­thing he per­ceived as spe­cious in a piece by Clayton Riley, char­ac­ter­ized Riley, and/or his use of rhet­or­ic, by evok­ing a “three-card monte deal­er.” This res­ul­ted, as I recall, in Hentoff sus­tain­ing a shit­storm of blow­back in which he was accused of racism. This was absurd on the face of it, because, really, at the time there was no white man in the United States who had less reas­on to be tarred as a racist than Nat Hentoff, who, for instance, in 1960 pro­duced Charles Mingus’ “Original Faubus Fables,” for Christ’s sake. And also, you know, three-card monte was a real thing. (I rather wish it would come back: as a meth­od of flee­cing New York tour­ists, it’s a hell of a lot more enter­tain­ing and even inno­cent than dress­ing in a bad Elmo cos­tume and extort­ing tip money for snap­shots.) Still (and—again, if I recol­lect correctly—Hentoff came to under­stand this), mak­ing the ana­logy in this case amoun­ted to buy­ing into/perpetuating a vicious racial myth, one that is artic­u­lated in the ques­tion Epps asks Northup/Platt after Platt returns from a sojourn serving a dif­fer­ent mas­ter, one who pro­cures for the slave a pay­ing gig as a musi­cian. You can hear the pois­on nar­rat­ive of “slick nig­ger ways” retold by white America every day, and you don’t even have to listen ter­ribly hard. 

7) “But beg­gin’ the law’s pardon—it lies.”

This line is taken dir­ectly from the book, spoken by the Canadian-born car­penter Bass, played by Brad Pitt. It refers to the law that per­mits slavery. Some have com­men­ted that Pitt’s char­ac­ter plays like some sort of deus ex mach­ina. I would com­mend those people to the nar­rat­ive from which the movie was adap­ted, which is emin­ently read­able and pretty short. In any event, Bass’ obser­va­tion is terse and powerful. 

8) “Sin? There is no sin. Man does as he pleases with his property.”

There is a scene late in the pic­ture in which Platt/Northup is com­pelled to per­form an abso­lutely abhor­rent act, at the insist­ence of Epps, upon a fel­low slave. This, like almost every oth­er event in the movie, is in Northup’s nar­rat­ive.  In the book, Northup observes, “I could look on Epps only
with unut­ter­able loath­ing and abhor­rence, and thought with­in myself—‘Thou
dev­il, soon­er or later, some­where in the course of etern­al justice, thou shalt
answer for this sin!’” In the movie, Northup actu­ally says a vari­ant of this out loud, and with great emo­tion, to Epps, who, like every­one else in the story, deems him­self a Christian. The above is what Epps answers in the movie, and it speaks strongly for itself. 

9) “It would be an unspeak­able hap­pi­ness to see my wife and my fam­ily again.” 

This is what Northup says to Bass when he finally decides to con­fide in the kindly and mor­al car­penter. This is not rendered as dia­logue in the book; rather, Northup writes, “I spoke of my wife and chil­dren, men­tion­ing their names and
ages, and dwell­ing upon the unspeak­able hap­pi­ness it would be to clasp them to
my heart once more before I died.” The notion of “unspeak­able hap­pi­ness” is one well worth reflect­ing on.