12 Years a Slave v. Django Unchained

        

       VERSUS         

          Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained have similar themes, especially concerning slavery in the antebellum American South. Tarantino takes a more stylistic approach, whereas McQueen takes a more serious approach. This is evident in the different pacing, cinematography, and artistic style of these films. Although films often contain important themes, the ultimate purpose of cinema is to entertain (and to provoke writings on Blogger examining the nitpicky details). This is a factor that 12 Years a Slave lacks greatly. In Django Unchained, Tarantino manages to portray slavery as a harsh institution in the history of the United States of America. At the same time, he presents the audience with an outstanding cinematic treat. Across the board, Django Unchained conveys the anti-slavery theme more digestibly and entertainingly than does 12 Years a Slave. 
          Although the slave brutality is more realistic and prolonged more in 12 Years a Slave, it is done more responsibly and, in the long run, more effectively in Django Unchained. Slave brutality is more frequent and explicit in 12 Years a Slave. There are countless bloody whippings that last longer than most editors allow for, white-dominance-proving rape scenes against helpless black slave women, and verbal harassment on both sides of the color barrier. Nonetheless, it is just too much. To be frank, after a while we get the point. The purpose of cinema is to tell a story and to tell it well. These brutal examples of slave torture do not move the plot forward, not that there is much of a plot. The protagonist gets kidnapped and sold into slavery. Once there, he puts up with heavy slave brutality, callous white masters (to say the least), the occasional good-hearted master (which completely contradicts the point of the overused slave brutality), and he proves to be an exemplary worker; then, out of the blue, he is given back his freedom by the two white acquaintances fairly responsible for his abduction in the first place! To make up for this linear catastrophe, it seems beating a dead horse (or slave) was agreed upon to fill in quite a bit of space. Whenever the not-so-bad moments of slavery were sloppily thrown in, they were quickly shrugged off by yet another act of human cruelty. In Django, there are plenty of humorous violent scenes to balance off the few scenes that really do stick with the viewer. One of the more realistic slave-brutality scenes is when Django’s wife is seen in a solitary “hot box,” a tiny, dark box underground. Steaming hot water is poured onto her skin, and one can really feel the physical pain she is going through as well as the emotional turmoil this sight causes Django. This emotional connection is never present in the cruelty sequences of Slave. McQueen guilts the audience without ever setting up the relationship with the characters to justify the audience’s empty pain. The emotional impact of the selective, heart-wrenching acts against slaves in Django Unchained is more fully felt than the brutal, unnecessary, regular scenes of cruelty in Slave.
          The cinematography in Django Unchained is more expressive than the bland cinematography of 12 Years a Slave. Sean Bobbitt was the cinematographer of 12 Years a Slave. Most of the shots in Slave are either extreme wides of the plantation, wides of the slave cruelty, or close-ups of the protagonist’s face. There are about three interesting insert shots of machines, but aside from those, the cinematography was pretty repetitive and does not look too great with its layer of film grain, especially projected digitally. In Django Unchained, Robert Richardson, the legendary cinematographer most recently renowned for his work on Scorsese’s Hugo, does a masterful job with Tarantino’s epic. There are extreme wides of the mountains to pay homage to old spaghetti westerns, but the majority of the shots are beautiful mediums and two-shots that make the characters come alive in the foreground of the exquisite production design. A few extreme-zooms give some rhythm to a few comedic moments, and everything is in focus. In Slave, at least one focus push noticeably misses its mark, pulling the view out of the tale, which is one of the greatest crimes in cinema. With its distinctive cinematic style, Django Unchained is photographed night-and-day better than 12 Years a Slave.
          The lead actors’ performances in both movies are tremendous, with different approaches to almost-identical roles. In Django the characters are much funnier and fantastical than in Slave. This attracts the audience to their interestingness and makes one feel as if he is part of something bigger than himself. Jamie Foxx is strong-willed as Django in Tarantino’s masterpiece. He starts out as a black slave separated from his also-enslaved wife, and he approaches the difficult task of freeing her with hope and tenacity. In 12 Years a Slave, Chiwetel Ejiofor completely inhabits the part of protagonist Solomon, but for what? He too is separated from his wife as he is forced into slavery, but he does not do anything about it expect brood. Though well-done, it is a somewhat self-indulgent performance in which he puts on the same face for most of the film. He almost seems to be thinking very hard to recover something he has forgotten. It would be a solid guess that this lost something is his purpose.
          The editing played a huge part in the final product’s pacing and therefore tone of both movies. Django clocked in at two hours and forty-five minutes, and Slave was roughly two hours and fifteen minutes. Django had two climaxes, each nearly thirty minutes apart. This gave the film the feel of an epic, especially with the film’s lengthy runtime. Despite its longevity, the action was relatively fast-paced when one juxtapositions it with Slave. The whole story arch to Slave seemed not well thought-out and desperate. In other words, Slave was relatively short but not sweet. It is not the sort of tonal piece that exactly makes people want to run back to the theater for more. Django Unchained may have had two climaxes, which is highly unusual in movies, but it delivered in both.
          Django Unchained gets across its anti-slavery message with a more well-rounded approach than 12 Years a Slave does. The cinematography, acting, and pacing are more alive and entertaining to watch in Tarantino’s epic. McQueen’s direct approach to slave cruelty ends up being less effective, mainly for it does not allow for an emotional relationship with the characters before these acts are done. Django Unchained makes 12 Years a Slave seem an unnecessary endeavor altogether.

Note: When writing this essay, I focused on the two lead slave characters for a more direct comparison. If you'd like to hear my thoughts on the other Django actors, then feel free to check out my other posts about the movie. I have talked about that film more than any other on this blog, so I do not want to repeat myself too much. The only reasons I posted this essay were to change up the rhythm of my usual entries and to point out how unnecessary Slave is. Anyway, to point out a few other actors in McQueen's film, I'd like to start with Quvenzhané Wallis. After seeing this little girl's performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild, I was excited to see if she would hold onto her abilities as she got a little older. Unfortunately, I was not given this opportunity; she had a total screen time of about two minutes. Then there was Brad Pitt, who showed up out of nowhere toward the end. Then there was Sarah Paulson from American Horror Story and Mud, who did well as a slave master's wife. Paul Dano continued his big year fresh out of Prisoners in this with a nasty performance as a field overseer (nasty, in terms of his role, is a good sign). It wasn't as emotional of a performance as the one he gave in Prisoners, but then again, what is! The acting star of the whole movie was probably Lupita Nyong'o as female slave Patsey. The only overly significant actor I failed to mention was Michael Fassbender. After seeing his somewhat-hypnotic performance in Fish Tank, I just wasn't impressed here. Maybe it's just me.
          I would also like to mention that although I poke some fun at Ejiofor in this essay, I did think he was tremendous. Nevertheless, a little shift in expression just a few more times would have been nice.