I'm not sure what you mean by "super evil psychotic thing," in 12 years a slave...Are you talking about Fassbender's plantation owner or other characters as well? Because I really thought Epps portrayal wasn't over the top at all, and his character certainly wasn't pushed on us as a psycho. He was a vile, drunk, sexual deviant who had little empathy, especially for the human beings he owned, but he wasn't psychotic or deranged. And the movie itself was hardly simple...we're shown a diverse amount of slaves and slavers in it.
When we first see Northup he has a nearly genteel existence as an artist in the north. As he descends we see how he desperately tries to hold onto that side of himself, despite the fact that he's thrown into a world where his talents and accomplishments are a hazard instead of a gift.
There are several different plantation owners and hands shown, including Northup's first "benevolent" (by comparison) master, who uses Northup as a novelty, but won't violate the accepted social order to help him, even though Northup directly tells him he's been falsely enslaved. Then we have several plantation hands, from one who enjoys exploiting and working slaves, to others just trying to eek a living. It's also of note that Northup is saved from being hanged by a white plantation hand, not because the man values northup's life, but because he doesn't want to face the owner's wroth for destroying his property. Then you have Epps and wife. Epps is a more enthuasiastic slaver, a man who reads the Bible to his slaves, using a religious weapon to endorse and support slavery. He also views them as his sexual property, and rapes a favorite, inflaming his wife.
These are just a few of the characters, I only saw the movie once, but liked it a lot and I walked out of the theater thinking it was anything but simple. That you'll probably walk out of the movie thinking slavery was bad isn't inaccurate or simplistic. After all, how honest could a movie about a man's life as a slave be without depicting it as brutal?
Oh yea, I liked Django up until the good German basically sacrificed himself and it became a super hero movie.
Onto Sansho, I really think the movie was more complex than some of you are giving it credit for. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a lot of subtext from the movie in the criticism of institutionalized and permissible brutality. There's a bit of harsh criticism too. I always read the opening prologue claiming the story is set in a time "before mankind had awakened" or something like that as sarcasm or satire. The Bailiff is hardly the most evil person in the world... in fact, we see a scene of him being an absolute lackey to his magistrate. And talk about nepotism and social privlidge...Zushio is locked up as a crying nuisance until it's confirmed that the goddess of mercy he wore wasn't stolen, but was actually gifted to him by his father.
You might find the film a little bit more interesting on a second watch. I was indifferent to it the first time I saw it, but after a period of a couple years, came across it again and i've been really wowed by it ever since.
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9 years ago
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jacob_barreiro
9 years ago
Thanks for the Haneke clip, I enjoyed the segment, but I disagree with him entirely.
1. I think most art is manipulative, and don't think it's possible, much less recommended, for an artist to suppress their subjectivity.
2. The notion of artists having a responsibility is one that I don't fancy either. Claiming that one has to render characters, whether historical or fictional, in a way that makes the audience ask themselves how they feel about them isn't inherently good or bad. Orwell wrote that all art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art.
That said, I think that 12 years and Sansho fit Haneke's objective rendering far better than you do. I don't see the cliché in Fassbender's slaver... If he appears to be a bent or wicked man, it's because we judge him by his actions. Slavery in itself objectively looks atroscious, and I don't recall many instances of melodrama, IE the shower scene in Schindler's list, in either the McQueen or Mizoguchi movie. And I'm telling you, there is far more complexity to Mizoguchi's film than you're giving credit for, if you rewatch pay attention to how the titular character is portrayed. Sure, he enjoys his work, but he is simply a buff-bovine among the chattel, energized and aggrandized for how much work he can drain from his property. He's socially insignificant and replaceable. His cruelty is simply a means of which he can prosper and secure a future for his child. Also, when he's evicted in the end, Zushio's plan to keep the slave's on as paid workers fails miserably, as the chattel, unencumbered for the first time in their life, promptly destroy the premises.
I'd highly recommend giving Sansho another rewatch, and I'd be interested in your impressions once you do.
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