Disappointed

Rating: 2/10 (16 March 2014)

I was quite looking forward to seeing this Academy Award winning movie but was completely disappointed in the extensive use of on screen violence and revolting sexual exploitation/rape. I'm sure it's a true story but there are ways to tell that truth in movies with innuendo instead of explicitness.
I believe the story should be told, but this movie is such a turn off that I think it does the story of suffrage faced by African Americans an great injustice. It represented the worst element of that era in such a limited storyline, exploited by a modern movie making machine that cares little about the real story of slavery and more about shock value to tell it's story. My family is part African American and I would not take my children to see this movie.
The story deserves a better script and direction. This movie, was revolting to watch. The scenes were way too slow and had no depth of character development. As shown it left the viewer feeling that the plot was so simplistic, in its unitarian tale of abuse that it lacked any real storyline that one could embrace and carry with them as a balanced view of slavery.
Slaves did experience hardship, and degradation by some landowners who treated them as property, but it was also a time with African Americans became some of the most skilled workers of their time. Many slave owners used them for economic reasons and treated them as a valued commodity. Most of the architecture, furniture, machinery used in the south was built by skilled African Americans. All of the farms of that time were cultivated by African Americans. I'd like to know just how many slave owners of the day were sexual perverts who raped children and whose wives were sadistic torturer's as this movie displays them to be. I suspect a lot less then whoever adapted this script would have you believe.
I really don't see how anyone can consider this the best film of the year? Compare to past winners I think it's a disgrace that the academy would choose this film, that was done so poorly; No plot, no cohesive storyline and extremely poor direction.