12 Years Of Slave Movie Download

[Evangeline Mellon]

12Years a Slave is a 2013 biographical drama film directed by Steve McQueen from a screenplay by John Ridley, based on the 1853 slave memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, an African American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. by two conmen in 1841 and sold into slavery. He was put to work on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before being released. The first scholarly edition of David Wilson's version of Northup's story was co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon.[7]

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup. Supporting roles are portrayed by Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong'o, Adepero Oduye, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Alfre Woodard. Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13, 2012. The locations used were four historic antebellum plantations: Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan, and Magnolia. Of the four, Magnolia is nearest to the actual plantation where Northup was held.

In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant," making it the ninth film designated in its first year of eligibility, the 49th Best Picture Academy Award winner and the most recently released film to be selected.[13]

Solomon Northup is a free African-American man in 1841, working as a violinist and living with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician in Washington, D.C.; instead, they drug Northup and deliver him to James H. Birch, the owner of a slave pen. Northup proclaims his freedom, only to be violently beaten and tortured.

He is shipped to New Orleans with other slaves, who tell him he must adapt if he wants to survive in the South. Slave trader Theophilus Freeman gives Northup the identity of "Platt," a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him to plantation owner William Ford. Ford takes a liking to Northup and gives him a violin. Tensions between Northup and plantation carpenter John Tibeats break when Northup defends himself from Tibeats and beats him with his own whip. Tibeats and his men prepare to lynch Northup but are stopped by the overseer. Northup is left on tiptoes with the noose around his neck for hours before Ford arrives and cuts him down. Northup attempts to explain his situation, but Ford sells him to plantation owner Edwin Epps.

Epps, unlike Ford, is abusive and sadistic to his slaves. Northup meets Patsey, a favored slave and Epps' top cotton picker. Epps regularly rapes Patsey, and his jealous wife abuses her. Cotton worms destroy Epps' crops, so he leases his slaves to neighbor Judge Turner's plantation for the season. Turner favors Northup and allows him to play fiddle at a celebration and keep his earnings. Northup returns to Epps and pays white field hand and former overseer Armsby to mail a letter to his friends in New York. Armsby takes Northup's money but betrays him. Epps questions and threatens Northup, but Northup convinces him that Armsby is lying. Northup burns the letter. Patsey is caught by Epps going to a neighboring plantation to acquire soap, as Mrs. Epps will not let her have any. Epps orders Northup to whip Patsey, which he reluctantly does, but Epps demands he strike her harder, eventually taking the whip and beating Patsey nearly to death. Enraged and regretting what he did, Northup destroys his violin.

Northup begins constructing a gazebo with Canadian laborer Samuel Bass. Bass, citing his Christian faith, strongly opposes slavery and castigates Epps, earning his enmity. Northup reveals his kidnapping to Bass and asks for help sending his letter. Bass hesitates because of the risk but agrees. The local sheriff arrives, and Northup recognizes his companion as Mr. Parker, a shopkeeper he knew in New York. As they embrace, Epps furiously protests and tries to prevent Northup from leaving but is rebuffed. Northup bids farewell to Patsey and rides off to his freedom.

Northup returns home to reunite with his wife and children. His daughter, who is now married, introduces his grandson and namesake, Solomon Northup Staunton. He apologizes for his long absence while his family comforts him.

A textual epilogue recounts Northup's unsuccessful lawsuits against Brown, Hamilton, and Birch; the 1853 publication of Northup's slave narrative memoir, Twelve Years a Slave; his role in the abolitionist movement; and the absence of information regarding his death and burial.

African-American history and culture scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a consultant on the film.[16] Researcher David Fiske, a co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave, provided some material used to market the film.[17][18]

Scott Feinberg wrote in The Hollywood Reporter about a September 22 article in The New York Times that "dredged up and highlighted a 1985 essay by another scholar, James Olney, that questioned the 'literal truth' of specific incidents in Northup's account and suggested that David Wilson, the white amanuensis to whom Northup had dictated his story, had taken the liberty of sprucing it up to make it even more effective at rallying public opinion against slavery."[20][21] Olney had observed that "slave autobiographies, when read one next to another, display an "overwhelming sameness." That is, though the autobiography by definition suggests a unique and personal story, that slave narratives present a genre of autobiographies that tell essentially the same story. When read in conjunction, as in this anthology, there is a distinct repetitiveness. While this repetitiveness disallows the creativity and shaping of one's personal story, as Olney argues, it was equally important for slave narratives to follow a form that corroborated with the stories of others to create a collective picture of slavery as it then existed. In fact, the "same" form presented in all of these unique and individual stories created a powerful and resounding message of the consistent evils of slavery and the necessity of its demise.[22]

A journal article published by The Johns Hopkins University Press and written by Sam Worley states that "Northup's narrative, though well known, has often been treated as a narrative of the second rank, albeit one with an unusually exciting and involving story as well as, thanks to the research of its modern editors, Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, one with considerable historical value."[23]

The visual blog Information is Beautiful deduced that, while taking creative license into account, the film was 88.1% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarizing: "While there are a touch of dramatic license here and there, the most gut-wrenching scenes really happened".[25]

Forrest Wickman of Slate wrote of Northup's book giving a more favorable account of the author's onetime master, William Ford, than the McQueen film. In Northup's own words, "There never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford," adding that Ford's circumstances "blinded [Ford] to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery." The movie, however, according to Wickman, "frequently undermines Ford."[26] McQueen undercuts Christianity itself as well, in an effort to update the ethical lessons from Northup's story for the 21st century, by holding the institutions of Christianity up to the light for their ability to justify slavery at the time.[27] Northup was a Christian of his time, writing of his former master being "blinded" by "circumstances"[26] that in retrospect meant a racist acceptance of slavery despite being a Christian, a position untenable to Christians now[28] and to Christian abolitionists of the 19th century but not contradictory to Northup himself. Valerie Elverton Dixon in The Washington Post characterized the Christianity depicted in the movie as "broken".[27]

After meeting screenwriter John Ridley at a Creative Artists Agency screening of Hunger in 2008, director Steve McQueen got in touch with Ridley about his interest in making a film about "the slave era in America" with "a character that was not obvious in terms of their trade in slavery."[29] Developing the idea back and forth, the two did not strike a chord until McQueen's partner, Bianca Stigter, found Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave. McQueen later told an interviewer:

After a lengthy development process, Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment backed the project, which eventually helped get financing from various other film studios. The film was officially announced in August 2011 with McQueen to direct and Chiwetel Ejiofor to star as Solomon Northup, a free African-American who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South.[31] McQueen compared Ejiofor's conduct "of class and dignity" to that of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.[32] In October 2011, Michael Fassbender (who starred in McQueen's previous films Hunger and Shame) joined the cast.[33] In early 2012, the rest of the roles were cast, and filming was scheduled to begin at the end of June 2012.[34][35]

To capture the language and dialects of the era and regions in which the film takes place, dialect coach Michael Buster assisted the cast in altering their speech. The language has a literary quality related to the style of writing of the day and the strong influence of the King James Bible.[36] Buster explained:

We don't know what slaves sounded like in the 1840s, so I just used rural samples from Mississippi and Louisiana [for actors Ejiofor and Fassbender]. Then for Benedict [Cumberbatch], I found some real upper-class New Orleanians from the '30s. And then I also worked with Lupita Nyong'o, who is Kenyan but she did her training at Yale. So she really shifted her speech so she could do American speech.[37]

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