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Well, boy, how you feel now? | 0:00:05 | 0:00:07 | |
My name is Solomon Northup. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
I am a free man and you have no right whatsoever to detain me. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
You're no free man, you're nothing but a Georgia runaway. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:17 | |
-MARK KERMODE: -12 Years A Slave is the story of Solomon Northup - | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
a free black man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:28 | |
It's only the third feature by director Steve McQueen but Oscars | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
are expected for both McQueen and his lead actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:43 | |
Steve McQueen is not only a respected feature film director | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
but also a Turner prize-winning artist. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
He gained a reputation in the '90s as a thoughtful | 0:00:55 | 0:00:58 | |
and provocative film-maker. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:01 | |
The transition from art gallery to movie theatre is not always | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
successful but McQueen has already won a BAFTA | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
and a prestigious Camera d'Or at Cannes. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:10 | |
There's just a huge truth to him as a man | 0:01:12 | 0:01:13 | |
and I think that's what he tries to pursue in whatever he's doing. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
I think that's what people respond to in his work. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
He doesn't shy away from provoking and evoking feeling in you. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
I think he wants to get as close to the experience as possible | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
and he wants an audience to feel they are inside the experience. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:32 | |
That's what makes not only his installation work but also | 0:01:32 | 0:01:34 | |
his film work so particular, because he is so particulous. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
He is so different. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
This is the story behind the making of his latest film | 0:01:40 | 0:01:43 | |
and the history that shaped it. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:45 | |
And a look at the prestigious career of an artist and director | 0:01:45 | 0:01:49 | |
unafraid to deal with uncomfortable and provocative subject matter. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:53 | |
America has always had a complex and conflicted relationship with its slave history. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:11 | |
Over 400,000 slaves were shipped to America in the 1620s. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
By the outbreak of the civil war in 1861 | 0:02:16 | 0:02:20 | |
their numbers had grown to four million. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:22 | |
The memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped by | 0:02:25 | 0:02:29 | |
slavers, is one of the few first-hand accounts that exists of this time. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
It's the basis of 12 Years A Slave, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
the latest film from British director Steve McQueen. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
The most extraordinary thing about the film, which I think is | 0:02:45 | 0:02:47 | |
really powerful, and really moving, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
is that I didn't know that story, How did you come across it? | 0:02:51 | 0:02:55 | |
I always wanted to make a movie about slavery, always, | 0:02:55 | 0:02:59 | |
and it was always about how one got into the material, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
what was my "in" as such, and I had this idea of a free man | 0:03:02 | 0:03:08 | |
in the north who basically gets kidnapped into slavery | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
and through his journey we, the audience, follow him. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
And I was sort of trying to write this idea, and then what happened | 0:03:16 | 0:03:21 | |
was, my wife said, "Why don't you look into true accounts of slavery?" | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
And I thought, of course, yeah, dur, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
as you do, and, of course, we both | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
did this research and what happened was she came across this book | 0:03:29 | 0:03:33 | |
called 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
and as soon as it was in my hands | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
I opened the book, opened the page, and I didn't let it go. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
For me, living in the Netherlands, it was almost like looking at | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
Anne Frank's diary, it was this first-hand account of slavery, it's amazing. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:52 | |
In 12 Years A Slave, Solomon Northup is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:58 | |
alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
and newcomer Lupita Nyong'o. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:03 | |
Brad Pitt has a cameo appearance as well as producing the film. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
You said that you'd always wanted to make a film about slavery, | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
what was it particularly that drew you to wanting to do that? | 0:04:12 | 0:04:16 | |
Well, for me, it was never represented, really. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
I'm from the West Indies, my parents are from the West Indies, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
and, of course, some of my ancestors were slaves. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:26 | |
And, for me, not to have that history visualised on film, | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
on celluloid, was very strange. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:31 | |
It's a huge part of not just American history but world history, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:37 | |
European history, so therefore I needed it to be on film | 0:04:37 | 0:04:42 | |
and to see, investigate myself through the camera, what occurred, as such. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:47 | |
Solomon's story begins in 1841. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
His world implodes when his comfortable family life | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
in New York state is taken away from him | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
and he is sold to work in the plantations of the Deep South. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
Powerless to protest, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:06 | |
he's unable to get word to his family that he has been kidnapped. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
SHE SOBS | 0:05:13 | 0:05:15 | |
Eliza. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:18 | |
STOP! Stop your wailing. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
You let yourself be overcome by sorrow, you will drown in it. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
Have you stopped crying for your children? | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
You make no sounds but will you ever let them go in your heart? | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
-They are as my flesh. -Then who is distressed? | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
Do I upset the master and mistress, | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
do you care less about my loss than their well-being? | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
-Master Ford is a decent man. -He is a slaver! -Under the circumstances... | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
Under the circumstances he is a slaver. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
-You truckle at his boot, you luxuriate in his favour. -I survive! | 0:05:54 | 0:05:59 | |
I will not fall into despair! | 0:05:59 | 0:06:01 | |
I will offer up my talents to Master Ford, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
I will keep myself hearty until freedom is opportune. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
Solomon is somebody who starts off in this story | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
believing that he's in a battle for his freedom | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
but discovers through this story that he's in a battle for his mind. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
It's an amazing first person account from | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
so deep inside this experience that really speaks to... | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
I mean, so much of the way the world worked then, the way it works | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
now, his way of being able to relate, poetically relate, | 0:06:25 | 0:06:30 | |
the story of what happened to him so powerfully was so extraordinary. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:35 | |
And that servant | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
that don't obey his Lord shall be beaten with many strikes. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:43 | |
That's scripture. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
McQueen's regular collaborator Michael Fassbender plays | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
a sadistic plantation owner... | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
Speak! Man does how he pleases with his property. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
The film has been praised for its unflinching portrayal | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
of the brutality that slaves suffered. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:58 | |
Tell me how you approached the physicality of the subject of | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
slavery, because it's very difficult to know exactly what you can show, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:07 | |
what you can't show and how you can put the audience in those positions. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
Well, I didn't want to censor myself on anything | 0:07:10 | 0:07:12 | |
so I said to myself, "I'm going to show everything." | 0:07:12 | 0:07:14 | |
Do you have a completely non-censorious approach | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
to your vision? | 0:07:17 | 0:07:18 | |
I'm a bit weird like that, I suppose. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
No, in this case it was about the truth. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
How could I make a movie about slavery | 0:07:26 | 0:07:28 | |
-and not show certain aspects of it? -Yeah. -I cannot. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:33 | |
It would be, for my ancestors, | 0:07:33 | 0:07:35 | |
and for other people's, it would be sort of... | 0:07:35 | 0:07:40 | |
you know... it would be a travesty. You can't do that. I mean, what is slavery? | 0:07:40 | 0:07:48 | |
Slavery is sort of, you know, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
making people work in servitude. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
And how do you get them to do that? | 0:07:54 | 0:07:56 | |
Well, you punish them. You scare the hell out of them. | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
And how do you do that? By making examples of people. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:02 | |
And how do you do that? | 0:08:02 | 0:08:03 | |
By the most horrible acts of brutality one can think of. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:07 | |
How am I sitting here? Because certain people survived that. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:12 | |
So...you know, there was not a choice. It's not a question. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:17 | |
In the 19th century, slavery divided America both geographically | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
and morally. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:25 | |
At the time of Solomon's kidnap, | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
America was split into 13 free states and 13 slave states. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:33 | |
Part of that free black population came about because... | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
a large part came about because of the American revolution. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
By the time Solomon Northup is kidnapped in 1841, | 0:08:43 | 0:08:49 | |
there is approximately 200,000-250,000 free black Americans | 0:08:49 | 0:08:55 | |
living across the northern states. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
Slavery becomes very much a southern phenomena, in contrast to | 0:08:58 | 0:09:03 | |
the northern states, where mostly northern states pass emancipation | 0:09:03 | 0:09:08 | |
laws which free their slaves at the time of the revolution. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
It's seen very much as contradicting notions of liberty | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
and equality, but in the south, southern plantation owners | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
interpret liberty as the right to own slaves. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
Well, to be a free black in the northern states | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
would be much better than being a slave in the south | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
but there were would be all sorts of limitations. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
Both legal and political. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
Solomon Northup is an educated man partly | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
because he grows up in the free states and here he's able to | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
partake in education, to learn to read and write. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:47 | |
But I think it's really interesting because | 0:09:47 | 0:09:49 | |
despite his obvious intelligence, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
despite his interest in culture, in the arts, in music, | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
most of the paid labour he performs is manual. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
So that says to me that there's still, | 0:09:58 | 0:10:00 | |
what Solomon Northup calls, "the burden of colour" in the north. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:04 | |
Mr Northup, I have two gentleman whose acquaintance you should make. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:09 | |
America's foreign slave trade ended in 1807, but domestically, | 0:10:09 | 0:10:14 | |
the practice was still legal. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:16 | |
Welcome to Washington, Solomon. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
To feed the south's need for slave labour, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
black men and women in the free northern states were kidnapped | 0:10:23 | 0:10:26 | |
and sold to plantation owners in the slave states of the south. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:30 | |
Kidnapping is a major issue | 0:10:32 | 0:10:33 | |
in mid-19th century America. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
One can't quantify how many people were kidnapped but a considerable | 0:10:37 | 0:10:40 | |
number of free black people were kidnapped and sold into slavery. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:44 | |
Solomon is sent to the plantations of the Deep South, | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
the economic engine room of 19th-century America. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
By the 1850s, the eve of the American Civil War, | 0:10:53 | 0:10:57 | |
there were approximately four million American slaves. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
Their total dollar value at that time, as an asset, | 0:11:01 | 0:11:06 | |
as a financial asset, was approximately 3.5 billion. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
That was the single largest financial asset in the entire | 0:11:10 | 0:11:15 | |
American economy. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:16 | |
Slaves as property were worth more than all manufacturing, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:21 | |
all railroads, all banking assets, | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
all the rest of the economy put together. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:27 | |
By the middle of the 19th century, the slave system | 0:11:32 | 0:11:35 | |
in the United States was the largest in the world, the only | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
other country that came close was Brazil. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:42 | |
It is central to more than just the south, | 0:11:45 | 0:11:48 | |
slave labour is part of a national economic system. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
In fact, it is part of an international economic system | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
and what makes it profitable is the global demand for textile goods, | 0:11:54 | 0:11:59 | |
so you can follow cotton from the Deep South all the way to | 0:11:59 | 0:12:03 | |
this country, Liverpool, where it is finished into textile goods | 0:12:03 | 0:12:08 | |
and put on steam ships, disseminated around the British Empire, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
indeed, around the world. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
Cotton and sugar production demanded backbreaking labour. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
As a consequence, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:20 | |
the slave mortality rate was at its highest in the Deep South. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:24 | |
Louisiana really epitomises everything that's bad about slavery. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:29 | |
Slave people often talk about their fears of being | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
sold down the river and when they say this, they are not | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
talking metaphorically, they are talking literally because that river | 0:12:35 | 0:12:39 | |
is the Mississippi, which famously ends in the port of New Orleans. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:44 | |
Those wouldn't be the places you want to be if you are a slave. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:46 | |
Those plantations tended to be bigger than your average | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
southern plantation, the work conditions tended to be harder, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
the work itself tended to be harder. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
Tell me about shooting in those locations. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
One of the things you were attempting to do was see the world | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
through your central character's eyes, but tell me | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
about being there and breathing that air. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
Well, you know, New Orleans has this... It's a sweet scent of... | 0:13:15 | 0:13:20 | |
or the perfume of music. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
It is a very...spiritual, as such or haunted. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:28 | |
It's got spirits there. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:30 | |
It has an other dimension, other elements which are within the environment. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
EJIOFOR: 'We shot scenes by lynching trees and it's impossible not to feel that, | 0:13:39 | 0:13:45 | |
'to know that you are really dancing with spirits.' | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
You feel that you are connected to something | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
and you are connected to one of the most extraordinary | 0:13:51 | 0:13:54 | |
experiences that a collective group of people have ever gone through. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
That was really powerful, to be on a set where everything took you | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
back to a totally different time. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:06 | |
I never thought I would be picking cotton in my life and to be | 0:14:06 | 0:14:10 | |
doing that at the height of summer, the height of noon, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:15 | |
I just... | 0:14:15 | 0:14:17 | |
Was faced with how strong these people were that lived through | 0:14:17 | 0:14:23 | |
these days. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:25 | |
These people did it for 16, 18, sometimes 20 hours a day. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:29 | |
That is something to reckon with. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
This is a list of goods and sundries. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:36 | |
You will take it to be filled and return immediately. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
Solomon is unusual amongst his fellow slaves because he can | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
read and write, a fact he has to hide from his slave owners. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:47 | |
A literate slave is a dangerous slave, | 0:14:47 | 0:14:49 | |
a literate slave has a form of power, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:51 | |
a literate slave has the ability to understand the outside world | 0:14:51 | 0:14:55 | |
and possibly to communicate with the outside world, to read newspapers. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
The literate slave has knowledge or can attain knowledge, | 0:14:59 | 0:15:04 | |
and knowledge, in this case, not just a cliche, knowledge can be | 0:15:04 | 0:15:09 | |
power and therefore the literate slave was always dangerous. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
Therefore he is urged, even by his fellow slaves, "Solomon, | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
"don't let them know you can read and write." | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
Where are you from? | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
-I told you. -Tell me again. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
-Washington. -Who was your master? -Master name of Freemen. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
Was he a learn'd man? | 0:15:30 | 0:15:32 | |
-I suppose so. -He learn you to read? | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
A word here or there. But I have no understanding... | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
Don't trouble yourself with it. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
Same as the rest, master brought you here to work, that's all. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:48 | |
Any more will learn you 100 lashes. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
After 12 years, Solomon is finally liberated. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
His traumatic survival story is published soon after in 1853 | 0:15:57 | 0:16:01 | |
and immediately becomes a bestseller. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
Of the 100 or so accounts of slavery that were written at the time, | 0:16:04 | 0:16:08 | |
Solomon's is the only first-hand account of a kidnapped free man, | 0:16:08 | 0:16:12 | |
most never escape their enslavement. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:16 | |
It's really popular among northern abolitionists, | 0:16:16 | 0:16:18 | |
as are many other works by formerly enslaved people, | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
such as Frederick Douglass's autobiography | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
and a whole raft of fictional accounts of slavery as well, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
including Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which really | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
exposes to American society the brutality of enslavement. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:35 | |
It was illegal to have this kind of literature | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
if you lived in the south. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
People who were caught selling abolitionist literature | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
in the south were dealt with very severely. Yes, yes. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:49 | |
In some cases you could get ten years for being in possession | 0:16:49 | 0:16:53 | |
of Uncle Tom's Cabin. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:54 | |
Despite its initial popularity, Solomon's story disappeared | 0:16:54 | 0:16:59 | |
from public consciousness after the American Civil War. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
In broad general terms, white Americans are not discussing | 0:17:04 | 0:17:09 | |
the slavery question any longer, | 0:17:09 | 0:17:10 | |
they are not discussing the rights of blacks. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
What they want to talk about is the individual valour | 0:17:13 | 0:17:17 | |
and heroism of northern and southern white soldiers, | 0:17:17 | 0:17:21 | |
and there is no space in that discussion | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
for the African-Americans, so they are kind of written out | 0:17:24 | 0:17:28 | |
of the popular memory in the late 19th century. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
Americans love a past and a story that says, "We are | 0:17:31 | 0:17:37 | |
"problem-solvers, we are a people of progress, we are | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
"a nation on a trajectory of improvement," or, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
as somebody once said, | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
"The United States is supposed to be the country that was born almost | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
"perfect and then launched a career at just getting better." | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
The slave narratives, the whole story of slavery, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:56 | |
punctures that. | 0:17:56 | 0:17:58 | |
-Cut! -Cutting. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
McQueen's film is a piercing exploration of one | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
of America's darkest eras. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:06 | |
Despite its huge impact on American history and culture, slavery is | 0:18:08 | 0:18:13 | |
a subject that Hollywood has rarely or accurately explored on film. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
The American film industry has typically depicted slavery | 0:18:19 | 0:18:24 | |
in rather benign and a rather stereotypical way. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
There's an old joke, nightclub joke, that Lenny Bruce used to say, | 0:18:27 | 0:18:32 | |
"What's the difference between Lassie and a black man in a movie? | 0:18:32 | 0:18:37 | |
"At the end of the movie Lassie lives." | 0:18:37 | 0:18:39 | |
Americans do not deal well with this story of race and slavery | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
and most Hollywood efforts and attempts over the many, many | 0:18:44 | 0:18:49 | |
decades to represent slavery have not been very effective. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:54 | |
An early depiction of black America featured in DW Griffith's | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
1915 epic, Birth Of A Nation, a story that chronicled | 0:18:58 | 0:19:02 | |
the relationship of a northern and southern family. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
Although a commercial success at the time, it has | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
since been highly criticised for portraying | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
African-Americans as unintelligent and sexually aggressive | 0:19:11 | 0:19:15 | |
and the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
The less said about that Ku Klux Klan film, Birth Of A Nation, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:22 | |
the better. I don't think it has anything to say that is remotely... | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
It's power was in its technique rather than its interpretation of what was going on. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:35 | |
It is completely false and misguided. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
As we move through the century we have Gone With The Wind, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:40 | |
a family favourite. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
So, Gone With The Wind, as we all know, | 0:19:42 | 0:19:44 | |
is the plantation writ large, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
you have your Roman columns to simulate Roman power and the | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
plantation itself being the bastion of civilisation in the south. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:55 | |
This notion of architecture and power, | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
the big house and enslaved people working in the fields. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
-Quitting time! -Who says it's quitting time? | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
-I said it's quitting time. -I is the foreman. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
I's the one who says when it's quitting time at Tara. Quittin' time! | 0:20:06 | 0:20:10 | |
Quittin' time! | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
And this was mythologised and romanticised | 0:20:12 | 0:20:14 | |
and the investment in the happy plantation slave, the singing | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
banjo-playing darkie, to use the racist terminology of the time. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
Mammy! Here's Miss Scarlett's vittles! | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
You can take it all back to the kitchen, I won't eat a bite! | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
Oh, yes, you is! Yous gwanna eat every mouthful of this! | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
So, it's problematic in that it's a great picture but it's a lie. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:34 | |
American television also tackled the subject of slavery. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
In the 1970s, Roots became an overnight hit in the US and Britain. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:45 | |
Based on the Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Alex Haley, | 0:20:45 | 0:20:49 | |
it's the story of a family's journey from enslavement in Ghana | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
to their struggle to survive the plantations and Civil War. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
The key to Roots and the marketing of Roots, | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
which was brilliant, was that it was called Roots - | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
The Story Of An American Family. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:05 | |
So, for Americans, a family. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:08 | |
Very classic, very Dickensian | 0:21:08 | 0:21:10 | |
and the storytelling was easy to follow and you could relate. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:14 | |
I think you're going to make it. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
Lord be praised, Toby, you're going to walk. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:19 | |
Woman, I told ya, my name ain't no Toby. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
I am Kunte Kinte, son of Omoro and Kairaba Kinte. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:29 | |
A fighting man from the village of Juffure. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
It was great storytelling in an era of great stories about families, | 0:21:31 | 0:21:36 | |
The Godfather, Roots, all stories of people who are marginalised | 0:21:36 | 0:21:42 | |
in American society, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
suddenly here they are, and Roots would fit right into that. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:52 | |
Roots, the great television series of the 1970s, garnered the largest | 0:21:52 | 0:21:57 | |
audience for a dramatic series in the history of television at that time. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:03 | |
It was eight hours, eight nights, on national television. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
I was a high school teacher when Roots played. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
I was in a large urban high school, | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
half black and half white, in Flint, Michigan. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
And when Roots played on American television, every night for more than a week, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:22 | |
we had near riots in our hallways. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
This was the 1970s, most American youth were, for the first time, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:29 | |
learning anything about slavery. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
Most recently, Quentin Tarantino's award-winning Django Unchained | 0:22:41 | 0:22:45 | |
tackled the subject of slavery and divided the critics. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
Django Unchained is this cartoonish revenge film of the ultimate | 0:22:53 | 0:22:59 | |
badass hero who kills all the white people | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
and rides off into the sunset like in a spaghetti western. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
I saw it in the theatre where people cheered and rollicked | 0:23:08 | 0:23:12 | |
and had a grand old time. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
I personally found Django Unchained offensive. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
They're spending the night. Go up in the guest bedrooms and get two ready. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
-He going to stay in the big house? -He is a slaver. It's different. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
-In the big house? -You got a problem with that? | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
Oh, no, I ain't got no problem. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:33 | |
If that's the lens through which we can get to the history of slavery, we are a sick people. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:38 | |
Django Unchained is a film-maker's movie. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:46 | |
There's a lot of historical inaccuracies in it but what | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
happens with Django is you never for a moment think | 0:23:50 | 0:23:53 | |
you are looking at anything that is real. You never do. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
You know that you are going to a Quentin Tarantino picture. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:00 | |
I've had real arguments with younger black artists, | 0:24:00 | 0:24:03 | |
but this is a Quentin Tarantino picture, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
do you go see Quentin Tarantino to tell you anything about history? No. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:12 | |
History was the inspiration for McQueen's feature, 12 Years A Slave. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
160 years after it was first published, | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
it's been brought to a cinema-going audience. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
McQueen's film is important in so many ways. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:26 | |
He takes the slave narrative that is narrated by an individual who | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
was born free and sold into slavery as a result of kidnapping. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
What this does politically, artistically, imaginatively, | 0:24:34 | 0:24:39 | |
is it means the audience are empathetic with an individual | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
who is, in inverted commas, like them. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:45 | |
So, he starts from a position of similarity to get to | 0:24:45 | 0:24:48 | |
a position of difference and what he does then is create | 0:24:48 | 0:24:51 | |
a world that is very unfamiliar and that's where the horror of it lies. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
McQueen has a reputation for creating strong, visceral images, | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
first practised in his early career as a visual artist | 0:25:04 | 0:25:08 | |
working primarily with film. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
If you look back at... when you started out working in visual art, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:17 | |
are there pieces you are proud of and do you still see yourself... | 0:25:17 | 0:25:22 | |
Do you see yourself primarily as a film-maker or | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
primarily as an artist who makes films? | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
I don't see myself as anything. I just do stuff. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
I'm lucky enough that I can do stuff. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:33 | |
Would you go back and do other stuff or has film become your abiding | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
-passion? -I do... No, I do everything. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:39 | |
It's the same thing, art or film is the same thing. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:42 | |
I don't see any difference. It's not... I don't see any divide at all. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
Maybe. Of course, I think art is, | 0:25:46 | 0:25:50 | |
to a certain extent, like poetry. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
It's concise, it's precise, and maybe film-making is | 0:25:53 | 0:25:57 | |
more of the yarn, the novel, as such, because there's a narrative to that. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:02 | |
There can be narrative in art as well, but maybe fractioned. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
Anyway, it's the same thing. You use the same language, the same thing. That's all. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:11 | |
The piece that first brought McQueen to the attention of the art | 0:26:15 | 0:26:19 | |
world was his 1993 work, Bear. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
It's a film of two naked men wrestling | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
and, as Steve told me, | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
at that time he wanted there to be two actors | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
but one of the actors didn't show up. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
It's a very, very stylised piece so there were moments | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
when we had to repeat a lot of movements quite a lot because he was | 0:26:37 | 0:26:43 | |
very specific about the shape, the shot he was looking for, the angle. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
He is very meticulous. That's one thing about Steve, detail. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:53 | |
Very often when a powerful work of art appears it triggers a rumour, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:59 | |
and I lived in Paris at the time, before I lived in London, | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
and I had messages from a friend saying it is urgent, | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
come to the ICA, there is this extraordinary work of art, | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
it left no-one indifferent and created a rumour far | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
beyond London that this great new artist had emerged on the art scene. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
The characters, or the two male protagonists, it was very unclear | 0:27:15 | 0:27:20 | |
whether they were really fighting, whether there was an element | 0:27:20 | 0:27:24 | |
of homoeroticism in their interaction. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
There were times when they appeared less to be wrestling than to be dancing, in a way. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:34 | |
You just get captured by the feeling of it, or by the movement of it, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:39 | |
or by the rhythm of it, or by the... or by... | 0:27:39 | 0:27:43 | |
There's just something that makes you want to stay a while and watch it. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:49 | |
McQueen's love of cinema is evident from his early installations | 0:27:51 | 0:27:55 | |
which reference cinema classics. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
Deadpan is a film that Steve made for a solo exhibition that he | 0:27:58 | 0:28:03 | |
went on to have here at the ICA in '97. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
Steve took this cinema moment from Buster Keaton where | 0:28:06 | 0:28:12 | |
the front facade of an entire house falls on top of him. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
Steve reworked this and repeats this motif. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:21 | |
I think he is really extrapolating | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
and sucking out all of the formal | 0:28:24 | 0:28:29 | |
and cinematic qualities, | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
things like the wind that such an event creates | 0:28:32 | 0:28:37 | |
or the vibrations on the face. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:39 | |
What I think this introduces into Steve McQueen's work is | 0:28:39 | 0:28:42 | |
a sense of the body under pressure, | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 | |
the body under physical pressure, under mental pressure, | 0:28:45 | 0:28:49 | |
a sense of physical confinement, and this becomes claustrophobia | 0:28:49 | 0:28:55 | |
in some of his more recent films. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:58 | |
It's impossible to be indifferent because the house falls on the viewer as well, | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
it falls on Steve, but the viewer as well, | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
and it's an incredibly sculptural piece. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:06 | |
Many of these films | 0:29:06 | 0:29:08 | |
are relatively short but they are incredibly addictive. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
Someone looks at them again and again and again and again. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:15 | |
I don't know anybody who has seen Deadpan only once. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:18 | |
It creates a situation where one cannot stop watching it on a loop. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:23 | |
In 1999, McQueen was nominated for the Turner Prize. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
Also on the short list were twins Jane and Louise Wilson for their film work, | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
Steven Pippin for sculpture and photography and, most | 0:29:36 | 0:29:40 | |
controversially, Tracey Emin for work which included her unmade bed. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:45 | |
We wanted Steve to win because the work had this amazing presence, | 0:29:45 | 0:29:50 | |
amazing formality to it | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
and, in a way, a weight that would sustain through time. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:58 | |
When it came to, "And the winner is..." | 0:29:58 | 0:30:01 | |
then it pretty much had to be him. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:03 | |
It was an absolutely timely recognition | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
of somebody who produced a compelling | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
and really singular body of work, | 0:30:09 | 0:30:12 | |
not just in Britain but throughout...throughout the world. | 0:30:12 | 0:30:15 | |
In 2004, McQueen collaborated with movie star Charlotte Rampling, | 0:30:17 | 0:30:22 | |
in a work that continued to explore the physical discomfort of the body. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:26 | |
It was an artistic blind date, yep. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
The gallery, the artist Steve McQueen, requires the presence of, | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
it wasn't quite that but almost, requires the presence of Charlotte Rampling, | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
and would like to know her or get to know her or something, | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
because he might have a future project in mind. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
Something like that. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:46 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:30:46 | 0:30:48 | |
He had a fascination with her face, | 0:30:49 | 0:30:54 | |
just as an actress. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
And also I think he was really attracted to her bravery, | 0:30:56 | 0:31:01 | |
she has done a lot of art installation work | 0:31:01 | 0:31:05 | |
for a number of artists. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:06 | |
Erm...and a lot of people aren't brave enough to do that. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:11 | |
It's a piece about resistance to aggression. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
And it all happens just on the eye. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:19 | |
All you see is a very close-up of my eye. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:23 | |
And Steve... | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
-tries to poke a finger into my eye. -SHE LAUGHS | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
And it's about my resistance to that from of aggression. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:34 | |
We were shooting it hand-held on 16mm on a macro lens | 0:31:34 | 0:31:40 | |
and...something electric was happening between the two of them. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:46 | |
And even, you know, as the operator of the camera, | 0:31:46 | 0:31:49 | |
I could sense this amazing charge. | 0:31:49 | 0:31:53 | |
And I think that's what you see in the installation. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
Steve always takes these things and turns them into something else | 0:31:57 | 0:32:00 | |
and builds an emotion out of the most unlikely images. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:04 | |
I think with Steve's work | 0:32:04 | 0:32:06 | |
you're really not meant to sit back and have an easy ride, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:09 | |
you've got to be working, if you like, as a viewer as well. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:13 | |
You need to be sort of actively engaged in analysing | 0:32:13 | 0:32:17 | |
why something looks the way it is, | 0:32:17 | 0:32:19 | |
why it's been shot in that particular way. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
You know, he wants to unsettle you. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
You know, you're not going to sort of sit back | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
and just ease into a Steve McQueen cinematic experience, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:31 | |
whether it's one made for an art gallery or one made for a cinema. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:35 | |
GUNFIRE | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
In 2003, during the time of the Iraqi war, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
McQueen was made the official artist for the Imperial War Museum. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:46 | |
The result was this coffin-shaped box | 0:32:47 | 0:32:50 | |
containing a haunting series of stamps | 0:32:50 | 0:32:52 | |
that commemorated the fallen, called Queen And Country. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:56 | |
The installation led to my first meeting with McQueen in 2008. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:03 | |
I went to Iraq...and it was a situation | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
where they only gave me six days to make a piece | 0:33:07 | 0:33:11 | |
or to investigate and to make a piece. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:13 | |
-Not been with the military before, not been in Iraq before, not been in a war zone before. -Yeah. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:18 | |
I was sort of thrown into a situation where, you know, | 0:33:18 | 0:33:21 | |
I had to acclimatise, and within that time it was time to go home. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:26 | |
So, it was a case of really being embedded, where someone is sort of holding your hand all the time | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
and monitoring what you saw and what you couldn't see. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
I imagine I was a bit of an irritant for them, | 0:33:33 | 0:33:35 | |
but it was one of those situations where I came back very frustrated. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
And therefore what happened after that was that this idea came about | 0:33:38 | 0:33:42 | |
where I thought, OK, I wanted to go back but I couldn't | 0:33:42 | 0:33:46 | |
because basically things had taken a turn for the worst. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
-You know, people being kidnapped. I couldn't go back. -Sure. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:52 | |
So, what happened was that this stamp idea came into my head. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
And I was actually posting a stamp, I was actually paying my taxes, | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
and putting a stamp on an envelope of Vincent van Gogh. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
And then... It just happened. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:05 | |
I thought, "Ah, stamps, soldiers, war letters." | 0:34:05 | 0:34:09 | |
The narrative of that, and that was the trigger, really. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
What I'm trying to do is enter people's psyche in a way | 0:34:13 | 0:34:16 | |
which doesn't come through the media, | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
which isn't about newspapers, TV, radio, the Internet. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:20 | |
It comes through people's psyche in a much more everyday, tangible sort of existence. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:26 | |
So, in some ways it's the whole idea of it going through the bloodstream of the country as such. | 0:34:26 | 0:34:32 | |
When Steve was sent to Iraq | 0:34:34 | 0:34:36 | |
as the Royal artist, obviously we would have expected a film | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
to come out because that's what everybody thought would happen, | 0:34:39 | 0:34:42 | |
either a film or a video piece. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:44 | |
And I think once more, you know, as very often, | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
he is full of surprises and he always does unexpected things. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:52 | |
One can never really predict what he does next. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:55 | |
2008 was also the year | 0:35:02 | 0:35:03 | |
McQueen brought out his first feature film, Hunger. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
Based on the story of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
who starved himself to death, | 0:35:10 | 0:35:13 | |
the film won him Cannes' prestigious Camera d'Or for a first feature | 0:35:13 | 0:35:16 | |
and also a BAFTA. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:18 | |
I think it's an extraordinary first feature, but tell me about that subject matter. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:25 | |
Bearing in mind the other projects you've worked on, why that subject matter? | 0:35:25 | 0:35:29 | |
It was one of those situations where 1981 was a big turning point for me. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:31 | |
Tottenham won the FA Cup, which was fantastic, | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
a big turning point in my life for sure. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:36 | |
And then there was the Brixton riots, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
which was another sort of twist in a way. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
And then obviously this guy called Bobby Sands, | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
who appeared on the TV screen with a number underneath his image | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
which obviously changed every day. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:51 | |
There was that awareness of some guy who, through not eating, | 0:35:51 | 0:35:55 | |
was having a voice in one way. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
So, at 11 years old, it was almost like an awakening for me, | 0:35:58 | 0:36:01 | |
finding out who I was, what I was, | 0:36:01 | 0:36:03 | |
almost like a real sort of... The outside world looked different. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:08 | |
I mean, a tree looked different after those kind of events. | 0:36:08 | 0:36:11 | |
It seems to me, in a rather crude way in my interpretation, | 0:36:11 | 0:36:15 | |
that there are obvious parallels that one would make | 0:36:15 | 0:36:17 | |
with the post-9/11 world. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
I mean, it is impossible now to look at a film of somebody imprisoned being maltreated | 0:36:19 | 0:36:25 | |
and somebody who is willing to effectively commit suicide | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
for their cause | 0:36:28 | 0:36:29 | |
without drawing comparisons | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
with what's happened in the world since 9/11. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:33 | |
That's the whole idea, that's the whole beauty of making this film, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
that it is about 1981 but it is about now. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
You know, people tend to forget what happened in a British prison cell 27 years ago. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:46 | |
People talk about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, | 0:36:46 | 0:36:49 | |
but in Her Majesty's prison in Belfast | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
there were other things going on. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:54 | |
It's always something happening in a distant country | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
and actually, you know what, it happened right in our own back yard. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
You've been working within the medium of film throughout your career | 0:37:00 | 0:37:03 | |
from the early installations to now the feature. | 0:37:03 | 0:37:06 | |
I mean, has it all fed naturally into the next project? | 0:37:06 | 0:37:10 | |
Erm...the only way I can really answer question | 0:37:10 | 0:37:13 | |
is the fact that when I was in art school I wanted to be in film school, | 0:37:13 | 0:37:17 | |
and when I was in film school I wanted to be in art school. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
Because I was at Goldsmiths before and then when I left I went to NYU, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:24 | |
I did grad film, but I left after three-and-a-half months because I hated it. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
So, every time... I mean, it's not so linear as far as a progression, | 0:37:27 | 0:37:34 | |
it's all about the idea rather than the medium. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
It's not about a camera, a big camera or a small camera, | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
or a paintbrush or a wooden sculpture or whatever, it's all about the idea. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:43 | |
One of the most striking elements of Hunger is a 17-minute scene | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
between Bobby Sands and a priest filmed in one long, continuous take. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:52 | |
I want to know whether your intent | 0:37:52 | 0:37:54 | |
is just purely to commit suicide here? | 0:37:54 | 0:37:56 | |
You want me to argue about the morality of what I'm about to do | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
and whether it's really suicide or not? | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
For one, you're calling it suicide, I call it murder, | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
and that's just another wee difference between us two. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
We're both Catholic men, both Republicans, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
but while you were poaching salmon in lovely Kilrea, we were being burnt out of our house in Rathcoole. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:19 | |
Similar in many ways, but life and experience has focused our beliefs differently. | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
-You understand me? -I understand. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
I have my belief and in all its simplicity that is the most powerful thing. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:29 | |
Why did you choose to do that scene as a single take? | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
It's like watching a tightrope walker, | 0:38:32 | 0:38:33 | |
the further you get into that scene the more you think, | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
"How many times did they have to do this to get it right?" | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
-I mean, it's one single take. -Yeah. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:41 | |
And, I mean, Bobby smokes three cigarettes during the course of it. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:45 | |
-Hmm. -It's like setting yourself the most difficult task. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:48 | |
"I know, we'll just do that whole scene in one take." | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
How I structured it was this. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:52 | |
Often it's the case, in a conversation like this, | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
a two-shot in a movie, the camera is on one person | 0:38:55 | 0:38:59 | |
and then it cuts to another person. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:01 | |
So what it is is the conversation is not with the two people | 0:39:01 | 0:39:05 | |
having their conversation, the conversation is with the audience. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
-Yes. -So what I wanted to do, I didn't want that, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:10 | |
I wanted a situation where the conversation was with the two people. | 0:39:10 | 0:39:12 | |
By having two people talking to each other intimately | 0:39:12 | 0:39:16 | |
and in some ways being a bit disregarding of the audience, | 0:39:16 | 0:39:19 | |
what happens is the audiences lean in more and they listen more carefully. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:23 | |
At the same time, they know they're not supposed to be there because it's an intimate conversation, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:27 | |
so everything becomes much more sharp, listening gets sharper, vision gets sharper. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:32 | |
So, in order to play that central role of Bobby Sands, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
Michael Fassbender had at one point... | 0:39:37 | 0:39:39 | |
you had to stop the production so that he could massively lose weight. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:43 | |
Tell me about what happened, how did that process work? | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
Well, we stop the production for two-and-a-half months, | 0:39:46 | 0:39:50 | |
and Michael took himself to LA, I think around Venice Beach, | 0:39:50 | 0:39:54 | |
and he went onto the situation of losing the weight. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:58 | |
We had a doctor with him, of course. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:00 | |
So it was a medically-assisted fast? | 0:40:00 | 0:40:02 | |
And then when Michael came back, of course, onto the set | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
we were all anxious, "Michael's coming and we don't know how he's coming." | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
And he walked in the door and it was just... | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
His sort of hollows here had sunk...and he looked very ill. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:16 | |
I was quite concerned. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:18 | |
Erm...but he had this sort of... | 0:40:18 | 0:40:23 | |
Yeah, he was ready, you know? | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
He was ready. It's almost like, "Yes, now I'm here. I'm ready. I'm there." | 0:40:26 | 0:40:30 | |
The Hunger was probably one of the most haunting experiences I think I've had with watching a film. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:51 | |
And the way he constructed the film too, which was before he really was getting into film, | 0:40:53 | 0:40:58 | |
so for me it was in-between like a video installation and a film. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
It was... And it really got it. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
I don't know why things get it but they do and he got it. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:07 | |
McQueen cast Fassbender again in Shame, his second feature, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
which explores the subject of sex addiction. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:26 | |
It left such an impression on me | 0:41:29 | 0:41:31 | |
that when I was in New York on the subway, | 0:41:31 | 0:41:33 | |
I was so afraid to look at anyone. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:35 | |
I was just so afraid, cos I was like, "Oh, I don't know what you're thinking and I don't want to know." | 0:41:35 | 0:41:40 | |
So, that was a memorable, memorable movie. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:44 | |
And, again, Steve doesn't shy away from the hard subjects. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:48 | |
And we all know that these things are going on, you know, and we don't face them. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
And he does, you know. And he just doesn't look away. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:56 | |
In Shame, set in New York, | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
Fassbender plays a troubled loner, Brandon, | 0:41:59 | 0:42:01 | |
and Carey Mulligan his equally anguished sister, Sissy. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:05 | |
Look, you get the sofa and you get your arse off it before I leave every morning. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:09 | |
-I know. I promise I will. Mwah! -OK. OK. OK. -Mwah! | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
SHE SIGHS | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
-We leave in 15. -OK! | 0:42:15 | 0:42:17 | |
The conversations around Shame came out of so many different things, | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
but, you know, primarily it came out of our interest in how people | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
find intimacy in the 21st-century when you can Facebook and tweet | 0:42:23 | 0:42:28 | |
and grind and twerk and do whatever you need to do, | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
you know, to connect and have relationships. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
And yet you don't necessarily have the day-to-day normal conversational interaction | 0:42:34 | 0:42:39 | |
that perhaps our parents had, or the dating system. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:41 | |
'In 2011, I met McQueen to talk about Shame, | 0:42:41 | 0:42:46 | |
'a film which, despite its difficult subject matter, received widespread acclaim, | 0:42:46 | 0:42:50 | |
'particularly for Fassbender's central performance.' | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
Wait, you'll see. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
Tell me what you meant by calling it Shame? | 0:42:55 | 0:42:57 | |
What happened was when we spoke to people with sex addiction | 0:42:57 | 0:43:00 | |
was what they would do was go on these sexual escapades as such | 0:43:00 | 0:43:03 | |
and...when they would come out the other end... | 0:43:03 | 0:43:07 | |
what would happen is there would be a sense of self-hate, | 0:43:07 | 0:43:10 | |
of self-loathing and ultimately shame. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:14 | |
And this word "shame" kept coming up again and again and again through our interviews. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:18 | |
There's a key confrontation between Brandon and Sissy at one point | 0:43:18 | 0:43:22 | |
-in which she says, "We're not bad people but we come from a bad place." -Right. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:26 | |
One of the things that I admire very much about the film | 0:43:26 | 0:43:28 | |
is that you're never explicit about what that bad place is. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:32 | |
Tell me what you can about what that line meant? | 0:43:32 | 0:43:36 | |
I wanted to make their past familiar rather than mysterious. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:42 | |
I think when people come to the cinema and sit on these seats... | 0:43:42 | 0:43:45 | |
they bring their history, they bring their luggage, they bring their baggage with them. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
And when they're presented with something on screen, they have an idea of what it could possibly be | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
or what happened or what has happened to Sissy and Brandon, | 0:43:54 | 0:43:58 | |
all the possibilities. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:00 | |
And I think that's much more exciting for them and, you know, | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
much more sort of close to the audience. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
I could have told a long yarn about, "OK, this is what happened | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
"and this and this and that and the other," but it makes it so specific. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:14 | |
And also I didn't want it to be a let-out for Brandon. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:19 | |
-You mean like an explanation? -Precisely, for what he does in the movie. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
I mean, you know, it's their past. And again when we meet people in our lives, | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
we know nothing about them other than what they present. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
-I'm David. -Sissy. -It is a pleasure to meet you. -Nice to meet you. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
-I think you're absolutely fantastic and you look great in the dress too. Please, sit down. -Thank you. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:37 | |
The actual script is really the last 60 pages of the film, | 0:44:37 | 0:44:42 | |
cos we actually threw away the first 40 pages. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:45 | |
And, you know, I was always had this idea that we need to see Brandon go to sex therapy, | 0:44:45 | 0:44:49 | |
and we need to see him in a therapist's room, | 0:44:49 | 0:44:51 | |
and I want the tap-tap-tap of a fan going, and I want him at the end redeemed. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
And he goes into the therapy and we start to understand why he is the way he is. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
And Steve was really good about going, "No, I don't think we need that, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
"I think we just pull it right back to the central story, | 0:45:02 | 0:45:04 | |
"which is a man who is driven by his addiction and destroyed by his addiction." | 0:45:04 | 0:45:08 | |
The central theme that runs all the way through the film | 0:45:12 | 0:45:14 | |
is that you have fleshly contact, but he's psychologically more and more withdrawn | 0:45:14 | 0:45:20 | |
the more contact he appears to have. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:22 | |
He can only do what he can do as long as it's completely objectified | 0:45:22 | 0:45:25 | |
and there isn't any compassion. | 0:45:25 | 0:45:27 | |
Yes, as long as he's in control. As long as he's in control. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:30 | |
I don't think he wants to let anyone in. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:31 | |
I think to fall in love with someone or to be in love with someone | 0:45:31 | 0:45:34 | |
is, you know, pretty brave. You know, that person could break your heart. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
I think for him, somewhere along the line in his life, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:42 | |
he didn't want that to happen | 0:45:42 | 0:45:44 | |
or didn't want that possibility of being vulnerable. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
There are sort of recurring themes, | 0:45:51 | 0:45:53 | |
these long extended shots are something that Steve within his artwork has explored extensively. | 0:45:53 | 0:46:00 | |
And that has come over into the film work as well. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:05 | |
Particularly in Shame when Michael goes for a run. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
You know, what's the point of the edit in that case? | 0:46:08 | 0:46:12 | |
There's no need, the character is off running. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:15 | |
By just simply following him we are, you know, we're observers. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:21 | |
And we can start to project what might be happening in his mind | 0:46:21 | 0:46:26 | |
as opposed to being distracted by a series of edits. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:31 | |
I just love the way he sees the world | 0:46:33 | 0:46:35 | |
and I love the way he somehow seems to communicate things to me | 0:46:35 | 0:46:38 | |
without ever speaking, and I don't know how he does it. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:42 | |
I think he's just... | 0:46:42 | 0:46:44 | |
There's just a huge truth to him as a man | 0:46:44 | 0:46:46 | |
and I think somehow that's what he tries to pursue in whatever he's doing. | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
I think that's what people respond to in this work | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
is the kind of ultimate...fearless desire | 0:46:52 | 0:46:56 | |
to point the camera towards the truth. | 0:46:56 | 0:46:59 | |
ALL HUM SPIRITUAL | 0:46:59 | 0:47:03 | |
Despite its scale, the sense of intimacy of Shame and Hunger | 0:47:05 | 0:47:09 | |
is retained by 12 Years A Slave, | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
a modern epic with painstaking attention to period detail | 0:47:12 | 0:47:15 | |
and a large cast led by Chiwetel Ejiofor. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
Tell me about working with Chiwetel. I mean, it's an extraordinary performance from him. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
He's done great work before, I think anyway, but tell me about him, | 0:47:23 | 0:47:27 | |
how you cast him and how you discussed the role with him? | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
Well, I asked when I rang him on the phone. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
I said, "Have you read the script?" He said, "No." | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
He said, "No." I said, "What?!" | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
"I just offered you..." He said, "No." | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
-Because? -I think because, as he has said before, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:44 | |
it was like having the role that you've been waiting for all your life | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
and this thing landing on your lap and...him being paralysed, | 0:47:48 | 0:47:52 | |
and him saying to himself, "Well, I can't do this." | 0:47:52 | 0:47:55 | |
I'm not filming that. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
'I was just very aware, first of all, of the responsibility of it.' | 0:47:57 | 0:48:01 | |
You know, the responsibility of telling Solomon Northup's story. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:04 | |
-Because it's a real story and an important story? -Yeah, it's this man's life and his experience. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:09 | |
There's a responsibility to him, to his descendants, you know, | 0:48:09 | 0:48:13 | |
there was a responsibility to the overall idea. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
I'd never seen a story like this before, I'd never read a story that was so deep inside this experience. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:21 | |
And I was shocked by it, I was compelled by it obviously, but I was also... | 0:48:21 | 0:48:26 | |
It took me a moment, it took me some pause. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:29 | |
So we worked, we worked together, we talked a lot about... | 0:48:29 | 0:48:33 | |
Valentino, Buster Keaton, silent movie stars. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:37 | |
Because what's interesting about them is their face, their eyes. | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
I concentrated on his eyes all the time. Eyes, eyes, eyes, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:44 | |
because he has to communicate something which is in him to the audience. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:48 | |
I mean, you are Solomon Northup as the audience member, you are him, | 0:48:48 | 0:48:51 | |
so when you see his face you have to recognise yourself somehow or what he's thinking. | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
Cos oftentimes he can't express who he is really at all, | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
he can't sort do certain things, but you have to feel it. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:02 | |
I remember so distinctly him walking onto the set for the first day. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:06 | |
So everyone was fairly relaxed and when the camera turned over, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
Chiwetel turned it on and it was electric! | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
And you could see every other actor in the room suddenly pricking up and thinking, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:17 | |
"Oh, my God! We're going to have to act our socks off here now just to keep up with him." | 0:49:17 | 0:49:23 | |
Days ago I was with my family | 0:49:26 | 0:49:29 | |
-HE SIGHS -In my home. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:32 | |
Now you tell me all that's lost. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
Tell no-one who I am, that's the way to survive? | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
Well, I don't want to survive... | 0:49:45 | 0:49:47 | |
..I want to live. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:50 | |
One of the crucial things about his performance is, of course, | 0:49:50 | 0:49:53 | |
-the stance and the stances that he adopts during the film. -Yeah. Uh-huh. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
Yeah. I mean, at the very beginning we did a lot of test shots of him in his costume, | 0:49:56 | 0:50:01 | |
the various costumes he had in the film. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:03 | |
And it was a woman called Paddy Norris, who's an amazing costume designer, | 0:50:03 | 0:50:08 | |
and she used to take soil samples from each plantation and match them with the costumes. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:12 | |
It's just the level of detail. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:14 | |
So, what happened was that when he put clothes on, he was standing in different ways. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:19 | |
It was kind of wonderful to look at cos it was one of those things | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
which occurred through the clothes and the attire. "OK, what am I wearing now? | 0:50:22 | 0:50:26 | |
"Where am I in this journey?" And through that the stances would change. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:30 | |
Solomon's story is a nightmarish reversal of the American dream | 0:50:30 | 0:50:35 | |
as he goes from free man to slave. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:38 | |
CHAINS RATTLE | 0:50:38 | 0:50:40 | |
SOLOMON GROANS | 0:50:51 | 0:50:52 | |
It's all right, Solomon. There's no shame in it. No shame at all. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:59 | |
We identify with him as a person who's been captured and taken away from his family. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:09 | |
We as the audience identify with him, so we move along... | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
we move along the narrative with him. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
And that's Solomon's crutch in the movie, we are actually in the audience helping him, | 0:51:16 | 0:51:21 | |
so when he doesn't say anything, | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
when he's looking at us, we are him filling in the blanks. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:27 | |
So the whole idea of what's happening inside him is happening to us, | 0:51:27 | 0:51:30 | |
we understand what's going on in his head because other people don't. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:33 | |
And that's what helps the narrative very much, the audience. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
Without the audience, of course, he sort of falls flat. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:40 | |
Solomon's chief tormentor is the plantation owner Edwin Epps, played by Michael Fassbender. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:46 | |
-You come here. -Master... -I said come here! | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
I brought her back just like you... | 0:51:54 | 0:51:56 | |
Michael Fassbender is now in the third feature in which you've directed him, | 0:51:56 | 0:52:00 | |
you have a very sort of close relationship, you've done incredibly intimate and intense work with him. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:06 | |
How did you and he talk about that character? | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
You know, we talked about Epps as a person who is in love with Patsey, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:16 | |
he's totally besotted with her. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
So we talked about it in a way that he... | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
As a character who doesn't understand his love for this woman, | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
because she's a slave. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:28 | |
You know, she's a black woman. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:30 | |
So he had to deal with grappling with that situation of him being in love with this slave | 0:52:30 | 0:52:36 | |
as well as him being who he is. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:38 | |
And how he deals with it is obviously... | 0:52:38 | 0:52:41 | |
through trying to destroy his love for her. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:45 | |
And he tries to do that by trying to destroy her in an unfortunate way. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:49 | |
So it's very twisted. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:51 | |
-I went to master Shaw's plantation. -Ah, you admit it? | 0:52:51 | 0:52:55 | |
Yes. Really. And you know why? | 0:52:55 | 0:52:58 | |
I got this from Mistress Shaw. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
Mistress Epps won't even grab me no soap to clean with. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:05 | |
-SHE SOBS -I stink so much I make myself gag! | 0:53:05 | 0:53:10 | |
500lb of cotton day in, day out! | 0:53:12 | 0:53:18 | |
More than any man here! | 0:53:18 | 0:53:20 | |
And for that I will be clean! | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
And what about Patsey? | 0:53:22 | 0:53:25 | |
Well, Patsey...that was Lupita Nyong'o. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
It was like searching for Scarlett O'Hara, it really was. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
It was over 1,000 girls we auditioned for that part. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
It had to be someone who was new, it had to be someone we had to find cos there's no-one like that. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:39 | |
So it was a long and hard hunt. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
And we found this girl who had not graduated from Yale yet | 0:53:41 | 0:53:47 | |
and she was just amazing. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
And that was it...a star is born. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:53 | |
SHE HUMS | 0:53:53 | 0:53:54 | |
I had to recognise that I had the privilege of doing this character | 0:53:56 | 0:54:03 | |
in an imaginary world. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:05 | |
And the woman who I was representing had no choice, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:07 | |
that this was actually her life, | 0:54:07 | 0:54:09 | |
these atrocities actually happened to her. | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
And that always just grounded me and reminded me of what's important, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:16 | |
that I couldn't sentimentalise the experience | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
and I had to get to it in a very practical way. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
That Patsey was working through her pain not wallowing in it. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
In 12 Years A Slave, McQueen explores the moral ambiguity that slave owners faced. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:35 | |
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Solomon's first and more sympathetic owner, Master Ford. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:41 | |
You must know that I'm not a slave. | 0:54:43 | 0:54:45 | |
I cannot hear that. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:47 | |
-Before I came to you I was a free man. -Aye, and I saved your life! | 0:54:47 | 0:54:51 | |
One of the most conflicted characters is that played by Benedict Cumberbatch | 0:54:52 | 0:54:56 | |
and there's a line about, "He's a good man. No, he's a slaver." | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
And the film is full of those contradictions, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
it goes out of its way to not paint people with simple strokes. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:06 | |
I think that's one of the powerful things about this story | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
that it's about human beings, you know, who are forced into circumstances together. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
You know Ford, that Benedict plays brilliantly, | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
is somebody who understands that it's all wrong, you know, | 0:55:17 | 0:55:21 | |
that he has, as he describes in the film, he has debts to be mindful of. | 0:55:21 | 0:55:26 | |
And...he allows himself to behave in this way, to be part of this system, | 0:55:26 | 0:55:32 | |
because it's a system to which he owes his entire reality. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:37 | |
And so why would he break it? You know, how can he break it? | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
It's a very strange character and I think he's maybe the worst of all three of them, | 0:55:40 | 0:55:45 | |
because he...he's not...he knows what's going on but he does nothing about it. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:50 | |
But at the same time he's in that environment where it's very difficult to fight back, | 0:55:50 | 0:55:54 | |
it's very difficult to say anything against it. | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
But at the same time he's...I think he's one of the biggest villains, actually. | 0:55:57 | 0:56:01 | |
HAMMERING | 0:56:01 | 0:56:04 | |
I thought I told you to commence to putting on clappers? | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
McQueen takes the audience out of familiar cinematic territory, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:11 | |
he is candid in his portrayal of difficult subjects. | 0:56:11 | 0:56:15 | |
It can be uncomfortable viewing. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
-Goddamn you! I told you! -I did as instructed. | 0:56:18 | 0:56:23 | |
If there's something wrong, it's wrong with the instruction! | 0:56:23 | 0:56:27 | |
You bastard! You got goddamn...black bastard! | 0:56:27 | 0:56:34 | |
Strip your clothes. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:36 | |
-Strip. -I will not. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:41 | |
Do you think there's a comparison between this story and your interest in it and something like Hunger, | 0:56:41 | 0:56:47 | |
which again is about somebody suffering great physical pain | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
and anguish in the pursuit of a cause? | 0:56:51 | 0:56:55 | |
Well, you know what, I've only made three films. | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
Thank goodness I've made three films. My goodness, I've made three films! | 0:56:58 | 0:57:01 | |
I've only made three films, so the next film, hopefully, or whatever's next, will be something else. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:06 | |
I don't have any kind of journey that I'm on in this way, | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
it's just, I don't know... | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
I think, you know, you're a critic, you want to tie things up neatly. | 0:57:13 | 0:57:18 | |
"OK, he's this or he's that." | 0:57:18 | 0:57:20 | |
But I don't know what I am yet, because I'm just starting. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
You know, I've been lucky enough to have made three films, that's all. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:27 | |
What would you like people to take away from seeing 12 Years A Slave? | 0:57:27 | 0:57:32 | |
I think it's each individual person's responsibility in a way, | 0:57:35 | 0:57:38 | |
not necessarily about this particular subject of slavery, | 0:57:38 | 0:57:42 | |
but in any subject in who you are, what you do today. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:44 | |
But one of the great things about cinema is that it does have a very populist and lasting effect. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:49 | |
Cinema is the living, breathing storytelling of the day, isn't it? | 0:57:49 | 0:57:53 | |
Yeah. Look, all I hope... | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
All I could hope is that people have two minutes to think about their surroundings | 0:57:55 | 0:58:02 | |
and what they can do about it, that's all, end of story. | 0:58:02 | 0:58:05 | |
You know, we're powerless, | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
all we can do is try and do something for five minutes and then we die, that's all. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
So you've got to always hope that's about it, end of story. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:14 | |
I think the movie's really great, I wish you all the best success with it, | 0:58:14 | 0:58:16 | |
and I look forward to whatever you do next. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
-And congratulations. -Cheers, mate. Thank you very much. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:21 | |
# Row, Johnny, row | 0:58:21 | 0:58:23 | |
# Row, Johnny, row | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
# My soul arise in heaven, Lord | 0:58:26 | 0:58:29 | |
# When you and Johnny row Hallelujah! | 0:58:29 | 0:58:32 | |
# Row, Johnny, row | 0:58:32 | 0:58:35 | |
# Row, Johnny, row | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 | |
# My soul arise in heaven, Lord | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
# When you and Johnny row | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 | |
# Everybody say Row, Johnny, row | 0:58:44 | 0:58:47 | |
# Row, Johnny, row | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 | |
# My soul arise in heaven, Lord...# | 0:58:50 | 0:58:53 |