12 Years a Slave (2013)

This film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2013, and it is a very good film. It is also incredibly violent and painful to watch.  Not to mention long.  It is based on the true story written by Solomon Northrup before the Civil War about his kidnapping into slavery and his eventual freeing twelve years later.

The problem with complaining about the violence is this--no matter how you feel about the movie, no one contends that it is historically inaccurate.  Slaves were  whipped to within an inch of their lives by sadistic owners and treated even worse by field masters.  Women were repeatedly raped.  Women became concubines as a step up from the brutality of their ordinary lives.  Children were sold away from their families and the structure of slave society was such that they offered each other few comforts.  It was every man for himself.  The risk of helping others was just too great.

The depiction of life in the North for black Americans at the time was far too generous, at least to my reading of history, although  Frederick Douglass' biography notes that the fate of free black men in the North was far better than in the South, so it may not be an out and out lie. The fear that whites had about speaking out about slavery in the South is also probably historically accurate--the risks that Bass (Brad Pitt) takes in helping him obtain his freedom were very real.  The legacy of this chapter in American history are alive and well in the 21st century and while it hurts to watch this, it is 2 1/2 hours well spent.