12 Years a Slave - A Cry for Human Solidarity

I know a film has great potential to meaningfully impact its audience when I leave the viewing experience with (and even hours later hold) a bit of a pit in my stomach.  12 Years a Slave (TYAS) did just that, as images, characters, and words were impressed on my heart about the sad chapter in our nations history about the slave trade in pre-Civil War times. Sean Bobbitt, who also photographed director Steve McQueen’s previous movies, “Hunger” and “Shame,” delivers the evocative imagery that forcefully portrays the barbarity and twisted logic that fueled the idea of slavery in America, the land of the “Free and the Brave.”

The film is based on a book Solomon Northup published in 1853 about his own personal ordeal as a slave for 12 years.  What is astonishing about this film is that it opens with Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a gifted black violinist living as a FREEMAN in 1841 Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with his wife and children in a charming upscale home.  Like with modern day human trafficking tactics, Northrup is invited by two white performers to join them on a lucrative circus tour with his musical talent. It was a trap, however, and Northup was kidnapped and given a new identity, Platt Hamilton, and accused of being a runaway Georgia slave. Northup is sold to William Ford of Louisiana (Benedict Cumberbatch), a saint compared to other slave owners in the film. But after clashing with an overseer on Ford’s sugarcane plantation, Northrup is sent to the cotton estate of Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a sadistic and manipulating man who is fixated on his young slave mistress Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o).

John P. McCarthy in his film review for TYAS in America Magazine says it well, “The film astonishes because it is so wrenching yet unsentimental, so devastating yet sober, so harrowing yet beautiful. But be forewarned: even knowing that Solomon’s odyssey ends eventually, it is hard to find joy in this unsettling work.” [America Magazine – Film Reviews, “Multiple Restraints”, October 21, 2013].

The epic television mini-series, The Color Purple (1985) was ground breaking in unveiling the reality of being an African-American slave in the deep-south.

TYAS is ground breaking in how it will draw the viewer into experiencing and feeling (uncompromisingly) an African American’s journey (already a free man, living in dignity and honor with a family in Northern United States) that descends into a hellish world of human slavery in the “Deep South.” TYAS helps the viewer to enter into the nightmare of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse people suffered in our very own nation due to skin color.  I call it the “Passion of the Christ” film of slave movies where all you can say after the massive human rights abuses is “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

But hopefully TYAS will helps us as a nation to reflect deeper into our own hearts about the reality of discrimination and human abuse of African Americans and their emotional and psychological pain that may still exist today in the United States.  Although we may have an African American in the White House, and our nation has come along way since the 1960s when Martin Luther King Jr. marched in Washington D.C., racial discrimination is alive and well.  There are still generational scars and healing needed between races and within society that still needs to take place.  This film can help deepen the empathy and compassion that is needed for the African American race, an important factor for progress in this area.

There is one scene when Epps talks about the parable of the faithful and unfaithful servant from Luke 12:35-48. The unfaithful servant is “beaten with many stripes” in that passage, and Epps warns his slaves he will whip any disobedient slave with many lashes, just like Scripture says.

What Epps, and the movie, leaves out is Verse 45, which says that the unfaithful servant “begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk.” Of course, it is Epps who actually does these bad things, so, as a Christian, he is the unfaithful servant of Jesus Christ, not Solomon or the other slaves.

TYAS’s value goes further also than the roots of racial discrimination of African Americans.  TYAS had me reflecting on how human beings of all races deal with others in a discriminatory way simply because they are different than they are, whether it be gender, politics, religion, or just demographically.

Brad Pitt has a cameo as the abolitionist carpenter Samuel Bass. Before predicting a day of reckoning for the nation and slaveholders, he asks Epps, “In the eyes of God what’s the difference between white and black?”

This echoes what St. Paul says in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Malick’s To the Wonder, a Wonderful Mystical Reflection on Everyone’s Vocation to Love

Pope John Paul II wrote in his Letter to Artists that one of the great dignities of artists is their ability to reveal an “echo of the mystery of God’s creation.” In Terrance Malick’s The Tree of Life, it was God’s Divine Providence along side the problem of evil.  In To the Wonder, it is the mystery of love.

Expect a similar look and feel to The Tree of life, absent of a conventional narrative. In The Tree of Life, Malick used a stunning “discovery channel type” sequence to unveil the mystery of God’s creation. In To the Wonder, he utilizes a poetic style to open the viewer’s mind, imagination, and heart to reveal the depths of true love’s mystery.  Be ready to go well beneath the surface of most “love stories.” It’s worth it!

The film opens with Marina (Olga Kurylenk) spinning and dancing through a Parisian park while her voice over prayerfully expresses with heartfelt emotion her new found love with Neil (Ben Affleck), “I open my eyes, New born” to the beautiful WONDER OF LOVE!  The scene quickly moves to Marina and Neil at Mont St. Michel, on an island off the Normandy coast.  They frolic around the picturesque, secluded and peaceful surroundings of the Mont and then inside the empty Catholic Church that sits atop the Mont.  The lovers venture through the church, gazing at the vaulted ceilings, the stone altar and the baptismal font and into its inner courtyards.

This opening sequence is no random imagery; rather it grounds the whole exploration of the mystery of love, particularly the love shared between Marina and Neil, in the transcendent and haunting Divine Love.  Could not newly found love between a man and woman that seems to spring forth from nothing be called anything else but a Divine Miracle?  It is this type of love that can only have God as its creative and mysterious source.  In fact, the name of this film is a dead give away of what Malick is trying to communicate.  In Marina's words, "We climbed the steps to the wonder."  The island and church, nicknamed "the wonder" is a powerful symbol of Christ like love (“agape love”) where Christ (The Bridegroom) is totally committed to His Bride (the Church).  He even gave His life for her.  How romantic is our God! [Eph. 5:25] “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her.”

There are other reasons Malick brilliantly anchors the cinematic poem with Mont St. Michel, a metaphor of the fortress of Divine Love.  The tides in the area change quickly (as Malick captures) and have been described by Victor Hugo as "à la vitesse d'un cheval au galop" or "as swiftly as a galloping horse."  The tides set the stage for a challenging and chaotic reality in Neil and Marina’s search for a true and sustained love – emotions and passions of love quickly rush in and out of relationships with the force of a galloping horse.  Something else is more defining and essential for a true and sustained love. St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “My heart is restless until its rests in you, Lord.”  Malick gets to the core of this.  Marina and her daughter Tatiana follow Neil from romantic Paris back to his home in a sterile Oklahoma suburb.  Soon after the emotional and fantastical high of Paris and settling into Oklahoma, we soon begin to realize that though Marina and Neil are head over heels in Love, yet they are not married.  There is something missing in their love that leads to emptiness throughout the film between Marina and Neil.  Neil’s heart is not fully committed to Marina.  Even Tatiana senses it.

We are also shown what seems to be a flashback of Neil in a relationship with another woman, Jane (Rachel McAdams).  Malick reveals a defect in Neil’s heart that keeps him, or anyone, from experiencing the depths of true committed love.  A Jane voiceover says, “I trust you.”  It is evident that Jane wants to get married to Neil.  Further Jane asks, “Will you pray with me” but Neil responds, “I have no faith.”  If God (agape love) is not at the center of married love, it will be difficult to sustain and grow in commitment.  Soon, the viewer sees the love shared between Jane and Neil break apart as he begins to glance longingly at other women, and like with Marina, forever keeping his options open and uncommitted and turning love (in Jane's VO) into "nothing but pleasure, lust."

Malick interjects Fr. Quintana (Javier Bardem), a priest in the Oklahoma town, as a sentinel like figure to keep the viewer oriented through the changing tides of love that Neil and Marina experience.  The viewer hears a Fr. Quintana homily on committed love, “A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, and give his life for her.”

Fr. Quintana is also shown to be human through a crisis with his own vocation to the priesthood, a vocation that is essentially a call to a committed loving relationship with God through serving His people. In his voiceover he says,  "I thirst" (for God) but worries that the "stream is dried up." He further confesses to God, "Everywhere you are present. And still I can't see you. You're within me, around me, and I have no experience of you. Not as I once did. Why don't I hold onto what I've found? My heart is cold. Hard.” 

Many film critics have read into this crisis of Fr. Quintana as a dreadful lowliness attributed to priestly celibacy – but given the context of the film, they totally miss the point here in Malick’s depth and insight into the mystery of true love.  Yes, Fr. Quintana appears lonely, but not for a woman.  His loneliness is rooted in feeling disconnected from God while he struggles with the challenges and demands of his calling to totally commit his life to the Bride (The Church).  Husbands and wives, though physically intimate, can also feel just as lonely when disconnected from each other and without agape love at the center of their marriage vocation.

Consequent scenes show Marina is unhappy because Neil, though still in love with her, is not totally engaged - He is not committed to her, let alone willing to give his life for her.  Marina returns to Paris only to wrestle with a restless heart and return again to Neil in Oklahoma.  But since the obstacle in Neil’s heart is never removed, their relationship goes from bad to worse (ugly arguments, violent outburst, Marina’s unfaithfulness).

Fr. Quitana says in another homily, “Love is not a feeling. It’s a command.  You shall love whether you like it or not. Even if you feel your love has dried up.  Maybe it’s being transformed into something higher.”  We finally see the beauty of this transformation of Neil’s heart.  After he punishes Marina with emotional abandonment for her unfaithfulness, he finally empathizes with her pain and kneels in front of her in a scene that not only forgives but asks for forgiveness as well.

The film’s true depth and sophistication on the mystery of true committed love (whether it be in marriage, a religious vocation, or otherwise), becomes strikingly apparent as Fr. Quintana is depicted achieving a spiritual epiphany. In his priestly calling to agape love, he comforts a succession of suffering people — the old, the anguished, the addicted, the crippled, the sick, and the dying — he recites a devotion of St. Patrick: "Christ be with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ in me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right. Christ on my left. Christ in the heart." The sequence reaches its climax with the recitation of a prayer by Cardinal Newman (one that was also prayed daily by Mother Teresa's Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity): "Flood our souls with your spirit and life so completely that our lives may only be a reflection of yours. Shine through us. Show us how to seek you. We were made to see you."

In the wondrous joy of romantic love, in self-giving sacrifice, in our suffering and the suffering of others, in the charity we offer to those in pain, in the resplendent beauty of the natural world – the mystery of true love is found.  In To the Wonder, Malick reveals another echo of God’s mysterious relationship with humanity.  We are made for life everlasting with God and God’s love for us is always present all around us.  He is totally committed to us! If we just open the eyes of our hearts to see.  Could it be that Malick is developing as one the great mystic theologians of our time?

There is so much depth to this film.  It most likely will not be popular because it takes work.  However, the more you reflect on this film, like in prayer, the more it will reveal itself to you.  This is what makes this Malick film so meaningful and timeless and beautiful – and why New Ethos gives it its Logo Award of Excellence!