A movie that polarises opinions......

Rating: 8/10 (13 June 2016)

I am not sure whether I have ever seen a film on here that has attracted such a wide range of strongly-held opinions. On one hand there are those that feel that it is well-made and acted, powerfully conveying an important message; conversely, those are others who consider it to be a boring, misleading political rant.
Clearly, there is nobody now alive who actually witnessed the reality of slavery in the USA in the nineteenth century, but there is sufficient documented evidence to show how incredibly significant it was in terms of its effect upon the lives of millions of people, both black and white. Not being either black nor American, I do not have the 'cutural background' that might lead me to hold any strong political views on this issue, which I feel may have influenced the opinions of this film by some reviewers.
My small contribution to this discussion is as follows: to me this is a horror movie as difficult to watch as most any conventional slasher / haunted house films. The plot in a horror film works most effectively when a normal person is put into what appears to be a normal situation, but is, in fact, a condition of extreme danger which they are helpless to do anything about. This is precisely the situation that faces Solomon Northup in this film; he is a normal man (unusual in that he is black and free, but that was clearly shown as normal where and when he lived) who is suddenly put into a situation that he is unable to escape from. The horror of his situation is exacerbated by the fact that the extreme brutality around him is treated as normality; two examples being how the children play in the background when Northup is hanging standing on his tip-toes and how the runaway slaves are casually strung up by (presumably) 'pattyrollers' when Northup is contemplating escape. It is truly shocking, to me at least, how the 'average' white person - not just the psychotic Epps and his wife, but also the slave dealers - treat the black characters; not only do they treat them as less than human (because they consider them to be less than human), but they treat them worse than I would consider that they should treat any living thing, such as a dog or horse or cow. The casual way that Epps arranges for cotton pickers who failed to collect below a certain (arbitarily decided by him) mass of cotton in a day to be savagely whipped is gut-ravishingly nauseating.
Films have a number of purposes, including entertainment, excitement and stimulation, but these are not the only purposes of movie-making. There is also the purpose of education and the provocation of consideration and discussion, and this film sits in that category. In my view, it is important to remember significant aspects of human history, and films make an important contribution to this. It is possible that Northup's book was not necessarily a faithful report, given that slavery was a very 'hot' political potato at the time of its publication, it is possible to speculate that the publishers may have distorted the truth to push their own agenda. Furthermore, the movie does not faithfully reproduce the plot of the book, but that does not mean that it misrepresents the conditions that the slaves had to undergo as a consequence.
My view, for what it is worth, is that this is a well-made and powerful film that makes an important contribution to the public perception of a significant aspect of human history. I believe that it should be mandatory viewing for young people in their teens, in order to make them aware of man's potential inhumanity to his fellow man, and - hopefully - improve their tolerance of the world around them.