Heart-rending Story, Vivid "Education"

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2016)

I must say that I was supposed to be watching this film for a school project. At first, like any other student, "here we go, get it over with." I'm completely amazed by how fast this picture made me forget that I was doing schoolwork.
Starting in elementary school, we've all learned about how terrible and heartless the period of American slavery was, and we've all had our own opinions on the matter. Never have I personally felt so subjectively placed among the people who endured it first hand. Understandably, teachers try their hardest to explain the true horrors of the slavery period, but this film successfully tied up any possible loose ends that the textbooks could have failed to subject us to. The abduction of free northern men to serve Southern slavers is a literal black market, but 12 Years A Slave emphasizes that it's part of a larger business, where bodies are sold to work in the fields and traded to settle debts, and white men are allowed to handle their "property" any way they wish. Whatever moral misgivings they might have can be justified by the legitimacy of paperwork, both legal and Biblical. It's just business, and Solomon is no more or less significant than a cog in the machine.