A great film

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2014)

I don't know whether 12 Years a Slave does anything more to shed light on the history of American slavery, but it's a well-made film. The acting is all top-notch, and the cinematography is great.
It's a film that deserves to be seen because it presents an honest (presumably) view of what slavery was like in the US. It has a few brutal scenes that will make people squeamish, but they're not gratuitous.
Some people have complained that the film doesn't present a perfect snapshot of slavery, and this is true. By all accounts there were, for example, many runaway slaves, and a noble legacy of resistance to slavery by slaves themselves. However, that's an argument that is unfair to both the filmmakers and Solomon Northup himself. Solomon chose to endure and try and survive, and to fault him for that is not right. That there were many developments in terms of slaves escaping, and resisting slavery, and no film can truly cover every aspect of a given historical time. The film is Solomon's story, and should be appreciated on those terms.
A great film, and a great story that needs to be seen, if only to gain a little understanding of the horrors that we do to ourselves.