Solomon Northup is a free Black man from New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He spends 12 years surviving the systematic brutality of the antebellum South, the South before the Civil War, before he is rescued. Steve McQueen's film refuses every convention of historical suffering. It looks without flinching and doesn't comfort you with a tidy ending.
12 Years a Slave is a 2013 history and drama film directed by Steve McQueen. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (2 cinematography, 1 sound and 2 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Schindler's List uses several of the same techniques.
Keeping the worst violence outside the frame. You hear it or see its effects and other people's reactions, and your imagination does the rest.
How this film uses it
McQueen is strategic about what he keeps off-screen. Some violence is shown in full and some is held back. That selection is itself a moral statement about what the audience can and cannot afford to look away from. He chooses the moments he holds back as carefully as the ones he shows.
Where to see it
The hanging scenes. The body hangs somewhere between shown and implied. Another director would pull the camera back, and McQueen's method here is to make the shot last.
Removing music, background sound or dialogue from a moment where most films would fill it. The quiet forces you to sit with what is on screen.
How this film uses it
A conventional historical drama would use music to guide how you feel. In those sequences, McQueen takes Hans Zimmer's score out. You have to sit with the suffering with no soundtrack standing between you and it. The silence puts you in the scene and takes away the protection that movie convention usually gives you.
Where to see it
The hanging sequence. The camera holds on Solomon surviving on his tiptoes with no score. The silence makes the length of it unbearable, exactly as McQueen intends.
Watching events from a measured distance with no swelling music, tear-jerking close-ups or showy camera moves. The film trusts what happens to carry the weight on its own.
How this film uses it
McQueen's camera does not look away during the film's harshest sequences. It holds, without cutting, on suffering that Hollywood convention would usually cut short. Refusing to cut is a deliberate stance. Editing would be a kind of mercy, and the film withholds it on purpose.
Where to see it
The prolonged whipping sequence. McQueen's camera holds without a cut on an act of brutality. Any conventional editing would have broken it up.
Telling the story from the side of the person doing the harm, and letting you inside their head. You start to understand them, which is more uncomfortable than simply condemning them.
How this film uses it
Solomon is forced to whip Patsey on Epps' command. He becomes the tool of a violence he opposes. He does it reluctantly, and then Epps takes the whip and beats Patsey nearly to death. McQueen makes Solomon's forced part in it the film's most devastating scene. The system works so that nobody gets to stay neutral.
Where to see it
Solomon's forced whipping of Patsey. Here, the film puts you with the person doing the violence in the most exact way it can. The victim is made the tool, and you see how the slave system works through Solomon's impossible position.
Shooting with a handheld camera so the frame shakes and moves with the action. This documentary-style look, called cinema vérité, puts you uncomfortably close to the character.
How this film uses it
McQueen and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt shot on 35 mm film with widescreen anamorphic lenses and kept the camera very close to Solomon's body. A documentary would observe from a safe distance. This camera is close enough to pick up what he goes through physically. The closeness makes its own point. What this body goes through is fact and should not be filed away as history.
Where to see it
Solomon's journey by ship to New Orleans. The camera stays tight on his face and body. You physically feel how confined and disoriented he is.
Questions
12 Years a Slave: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does 12 Years a Slave use?
CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in 12 Years a Slave (2013): Off-Screen Atrocity, Strategic Silence, Observational Restraint, Perpetrator Perspective and Handheld Cinema Vérité.
Who directed 12 Years a Slave?
Steve McQueen directed 12 Years a Slave, released in 2013. CineCode also covers Shame (2011).
What films are similar to 12 Years a Slave?
Films that share techniques with 12 Years a Slave include Schindler's List (1993), Manchester by the Sea (2016), Platoon (1986), Das Boot (1981).
