Don't expect heavy-handed political messages.

Rating: 10/10 (15 November 2013)

Expecting to see some sort of race-baiting we-are-good-but-you-are-evil movie, I was very pleased that this is good stuff.
The movie is more about Northup's resiliency but also his inevitable slow slide into hopelessness than anything else. When he is finally rescued, it comes as a complete shock because he had given up fighting the system. And there is no shortage of white people in the film who are portrayed sympathetically. This is not a "whitey has always hated us movie." It is a tale of how a man with virtually everything going for him is reduced to crushing bondage by a legal system and culture.
The really bad people portrayed in the film are shown as being incapable of comprehending that blacks are in any way equal to whites. Grow up thinking such things and the likelihood you will have some sort of glorious epiphany is entirely unlikely.
Unlike Schindler's List, a movie that will cause you to look away, be glad you saw it, and swear you will never see it again because of its gut-wrenching images, 12 Years was watchable for me. It is a movie. Everyone and their grandchildren involved are long gone. The Peculiar Institution is gone. No one in the US has been a slave-holder or a slave.
He was saved because people who were consistently good, mostly white people, were able to overcome people who were consistently evil, also white people.
I went in expecting a movie with a heavy-handed message but that was well-acted and was pleasingly surprised that the movie was well-acted, well-staged, and void of any sort of political message.
I have heard people, the same sort who say the Holocaust never happened, claim that the story is nearly complete fabrication. Unlike The Butler, which is about as true to reality as Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, this one holds up well to historical scrutiny. Keep in mind that histories are always written by the winners, in this case the Abolitionists. But the fact that SN spoke kindly of two of his masters tends to poke holes in the theory that this is just another Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I take that back. There is a political message. That message is that government can do anything it wants with you and you are essentially powerless. SN was enslaved by the system but rescued by individuals.