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A free slave?

12 years a slave (2013)

They make us believe us that it is a darn good film and the list of nominations and accolades are testimony of that. Unfortunately, a non-artistic person like me failed to see the fantastic nature of the presentation.
They say praises of Steve McQueen, the director, but it is the different McQueen than the one I knew growing up.
We have seen way too many movies like this before, on the evil pasts of what the white settlers of the New World did to their African slaves, the treachery, the unmanly conduct and bullying.
This time around it is the narration of a pre-Civil War free Negro who was kidnapped and sold off as a slave to cotton plantation.
He endured 12 years of torture and loss of freedom to be reunited with his family, essentially losing a great deal of his adulthood. This man, Solomon Northup, later became a writer and helped slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad.
We again see how man uses selected quotes  from Bible to subdue his subjects and justify the torture that he devices on errant slaves.
Anyway, nothing like Alex Hailey's 'Roots' which also turned out to of questionable authenticity!  
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