12 Years a Slave: Stark & Powerful

12 Years a Slave is the most unsanitized and affecting movie about slavery that has ever come out of Hollywood. And rather than being a whitewashed film that views the slave experience from the perspective of white people, this is emphatically a story about what it meant to be a slave.

Set in 1841, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York with a wife and two children. He is an accomplished violinist and joins two men on a trip to Washington D.C. where they promise him a a lot of money for performing at a circus. However, when he gets there, he is drugged and wakes up in chains, no longer a free man. Abducted by slave traders, Solomon is shipped down to New Orleans, given the name Platt, and sold into slavery. A fate that he is chained to for twelve long years.

Solomon's first master, William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), is a seemingly kind man, but he is entrenched in the Establishment and never going to give a slave his freedom. He eventually has to sell Solomon to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), one of the cruelest slavers in the region, who preaches that slaves are nothing more than property and subjects them to his every drunken whim. Solomon's fellow slaves warn him not to reveal that he is an educated man, because he is "there to work, not to read and write." He cannot bear the injustices he witnesses every day, but he has little choice than to answer to the name of Platt and bide his time until he can find a way to get word to his friends and family up North. 

Director Steve McQueen offers a wrenching and unflinching look at Solomon's trials over the course of twelve years. He uses long close-ups that capture the shifting emotions on the characters' faces as they transition from hope to despair to resignation. Hans Zimmer has composed a restrained background score and the main violin theme is a simple and haunting piece that stirs your soul. The spirituals that are sung by the slaves during their labors are painful and uplifting, hopeless and hopeful all at the same time. Chiwetel Ejiofor's incredible performance is quiet, angry, and desperate. Michael Fassbender's portrayal of the sadistic Edwin Epps will make you want to shout out and beg him to stop. In addition, Lupita Nyong'o deserves multiple accolades for her searing performance as Patsey, a slave who suffers various atrocities alongside Solomon with absolutely no hope of freedom. 

The remarkable fact about 12 Years a Slave is that it is based on a true story. Every horror you witness on screen actually happened to a human being. The real Solomon Northup eventually got free, returned to his family, and published his memoirs in 1853. But rather than feeling happy that Solomon got to return home, you are left with overwhelming sadness for the slaves he had to leave behind.