Twelve Years A Slave

There are some movies that I watch because I feel that it is important to do so. Twelve Years A Slave was not the most comfortable movie I have ever sat through but I was happy that I did so. I needed a reminder that the slave experience is not limited to the story of Django.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, the New York State citizen who was kidnapped and made to work on a plantation in New Orleans in the 1800s. Steve McQueen (Hunger) directs from a script he co-wrote with John Ridley, based in part by Northup's memoir. Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, and Paul Giamatti co-star.

Ejiofor will most certainly get an Oscar nomination for a role where he wears his pain (and the pain of his people) on his sleeves. The narrative jumps back and forth and that only adds to the crushing weight of the oppression the slaves are under. How such an immoral systematic subjugation of a people can ever be ignored or swept under the rug is beyond me. I was thankful for the glimpses of humanity that find it's way into Ejiofor's life during his time as a slave. The contrast is so rare and so glaring that it is difficult to reconcile in one's brain. How can one man treat his slaves humanely while another brutalizes them in all manner possible?

The stunning and tragic true story of a free black man sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South, 12 Years a Slave is guttural, raw, and necessary to the moment, the kind of film that merits critical accolades and industry trophies.

By forcing his audience to watch, passively, for minute after minute, McQueen makes us all complicit. It's the scene that no American has been able to produce because it's void of heroism, and shows us slavery as a mere means of doing business.