12 Years a Slave (2013)

Seeing 2013's best picture Oscar winner restores me to the statues of having seen each film to win in this category as I already saw Birdman in the theater. A true story 12 Years a Slave is based on Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir of the same title which was a major work in the abolitionist cannon and chronicles the dozen years its author, born a free black man in the north, spent as a slave in the south after having been abducted with the aid of men who claimed to be his friends. It's rough going for Solomon, and also for the audience, because like movies such as Schindler's List,  12 Years a Slave is about exposing its audience to a dark and unpleasant aspect of human history because its just important to know about such things and the viscerality of film is a great way to communicate them. It almost feels wrong to focus on anything but the story here but the cast is a strong one especially Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon and Michael Fassbender as a particularly vicious salve master, and of course Lupita Nyong'o won an Oscar for best supporting actress as Solomon's fellow slave Patsey. The films quite straight forward, what happened to Solomon was simply awful and this film communicates that well and I think will long serve as a convenient reference point for many people as to the reality of slave experience in pre- Civil War America. ****