9th October, 1969, saw the birth of Steve McQueen...
After three pictures, you really begin to get an idea of what a director is capable of; Steve McQueen seems as capable as just about anyone else out there.
McQueen was an active artist with a number of accomplished short films under his belt before he made his first feature, Hunger (20098, and it really shows as his technical craft is pretty much impeccable. He shoots with such a strong visual language that large portions of all of his films are told with next to no dialogue; and viewers don’t miss a beat.
Hunger especially fits this description as, outside one incredible acting showcase between McQueen’s go to star Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham, has little to no exposition throughout. You experience the world of the prison from almost every angle possible. The filth the prisoners are living in, the strain some of the guards are going through dealing with the brutality, the violent back and forth between the two, all of it is beautiful and terrifyingly realized.
Almost every scene in Shame between Brandon and his sister, Sissy, are single takes and it helps ramp up the tension that is underlying their entire relationship to near unbearable levels. Though, it is the single take around Patsey’s whipping in 12 Years a Slave that’s possibly McQueen’s greatest technical achievement to date, perfection at every level in that moment.
McQueen is able to capture Solomon’s fears, anger and sadness as he is put in a position that he was never meant to be in, and it allows you to feel every physical and emotional gut punch dealt out to our hero.
Shame (2011) also revels in a lack of dialogue, but uses that “silence” in a different way. We sit and watch as Brandon slowly boils over and we are left to figure out what he is thinking, wondering what he might do next. This puts us right next to Brandon’s confusion and uncertainty. But more importantly, it allows the viewer to be in his mind-set, enabling us to join in on his journey, which most people would never dare think about. The silence and visual language were never more essential in McQueen’s work than in 12 Years a Slave (2013), as McQueen’s direction takes us along the life of a slave, whom have no voice or status in their world.
The visceral experience McQueen is able to create is also something few directors are capable of crafting. In Hunger, you can smell the shit on the walls, the piss running down the hall, the blood staining the concrete, you feel like you can smell it. The smell of sex almost oozes out of the screen during Shame’s finale. Every whip on Patsey’s back in 12 Years a Slave leads you to sink lower and lower into your seat, hoping to get away from the carnage. A slave’s life in general has never been brought to the screen in such appropriately disgusting precision; never letting you hide from the ugly truths our world’s history wishes it could forget.
McQueen is often able to suck you in the way he does because he is a master of the single take. It’s not always the flashiest camera move, or any camera move period, but the trust McQueen puts in his actors allows him to rarely cut, never giving the viewer a chance to look away. I would argue that the long single take conversation in Hunger goes on a bit too long, but as McQueen has gone on he has continued to get better and better with his single take shot selection.
Actors also seem to come out and do some of their best work for McQueen, starting first and foremost with Michael Fassbender. Fassbender has starred in all three of McQueen’s features and you would be hard to argue that all three aren’t in his five best roles. Hunger is the least complex of the bunch, but Shame and 12 Years a Slave gave Fassbender some complex and intense characters to portray. Carey Mulligan’s work in Shame is also as good as anything else she has done. Not asked to be the prim and proper character that got her to this point, Mulligan is raw and real as the unstable Sissy. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s never been better than he is in 12 Years a Slave and he was my pick for best male performance for that year. Ejiofor was able to communicate so much without words; it is like he and McQueen were meant to do a film together. Lupita Nyong’o set an incredibly high bar for herself going forward in 12 Years, and Paul Dano turned in possibly his best turn as a slime ball in a career full of great performances.
At three films, I am very comfortable declaring Steve McQueen one of the best working directors and his filmography makes it hard to poke holes in that argument. His films aren’t for everyone, but they are crafted and produced with such skill and precision you can’t deny his abilities. McQueen is one of the greats already; hopefully we have many more years of greatness from him.
by Zac Oldenburg
