A fantastic truly disturbing film is quite hard to watch

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2016)

I have heard great things about 12 years a slave and I have finally seen it and this is a fantastic film. The premise of this film sees the true story of a free black man that is drugged and sold into slavery. Chiwetel ejiofor is our protagonist and he is absolutely amazing in this film, you truly feel sympathy for him in this film and he gives such a powerful performance that you will remember for a long time. Michael fassbender plays one of his slave owners and wow this is one of the most intense performances that I have ever seen, he gives everything to this performance and you truly can't stand him. Lupito nyongo makes her film debut here and she is great here. She is very vulnerable here and you truly want her to survive and get free. The other smaller roles played by benedict cumberbatch, brad pitt and Paul giamatti are all really good and they allow allot of credibility and there performances are impactful. The story is incredibly uncomfortable to see this guy get put through hell. This film really makes you question humanity and its past and does a great job in making you feel lots of sympathy for the slaves in this film. The script has allot of disturbing dialogue in it that add to the tension. There is like no humour but that is necessary for this film because of it's intense subject matter. The style of this film is that this film is willing to show anything no matter how disturbing and real it feels. However, the style of the film is where my one negative for this film comes and that by seeing the title you can guess that this film takes place over a few years but it just never felt like it, it hurt the emotional weight a bit as the time span was poorly shown. Overall this is one of the most important films I have ever seen and you should see it at least once even though it is not an easy watch.