A Slave ready to enslave Oscars

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2014)

Best of 2013, undoubtedly.
As New York Times perfectly quoted "the genius of 12 Years a Slave is its insistence on banal evil, and on terror, that seeped into souls, bound bodies and reaped an enduring, terrible price."
A masterpiece from Steve McQueen,he shows that racism, aside from its barbarous inhumanity, is insanely inefficient.
12 Years is a powerful drama driven by McQueen's bold direction and the finest performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor's career.
John Ridley's script brings both historical sweep and an urgent intimacy to Northup's story — no small accomplishment. Rife with visceral beatings, multiple lynchings and an almost casual air of psychological cruelty, 12 Years a Slave is anything but easy to watch, but it is powerfully moving.
It's also a powerful corrective, because it so skillfully links that brutality to the sort of tranquil antebellum South that Hollywood has often peddled — the broad porches, the hoop skirts, the fields fluffy with cotton. It will be hard for audiences to see those images ever again without thinking about the savagery and injustice that propped them up.