12 Years A Slave By Steve Mcqueen

A memoir brought to the big screen, 12 Years a Slave, recounts horrific story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from the North who was kidnapped and later sold into slavery in antebellum South in the United States. The film, directed by Steve McQueen, was released in 2013, directed on the basis of Solomon Northup’s memoir bearing the same name, which was released in 1853. Born a free black man living in Saratoga, New York, Solomon Northup, lead a comfortable life with his wife and children, when two men claiming to be traveling entertainers managed to convince Solomon to accompany them to Washington on a potentially lucrative business venture. Solomon agrees, only to find himself victim of a scam and kidnapping ring, he is sold into slavery, and transported to a sugar cane plantation in the South.

The movie is able to capture a lot of details about the lives of slaves with very great accuracy. For example, slaves commonly described having “trees of scar” all across their backs, as a result of the brutal and gruesome whippings they received from their masters, and although shockingly—and quite disturbingly—the movie does a great job of explicitly depicting such treatment. In one instance, Solomon was forced at gunpoint by his slave master, Edwin Epps, to whip another slave, Patsey, to the point of her collapse from sheer pain. The film also explores the treatment that enslaved women had to go through, it was common among many plantations for slave masters to rape the enslaved women. In the film, the audience gets to see that happen in detail as well, where Edwin Epps, repeatedly rapes Patsey and takes almost sadistic pleasure in seeing her being