The movie is brutal, pessimistic, about the tragic stories of the black peoples. 12 years a slave alone cannot capture entirely about Slave trade. It is a tiny fraction of that dark episodes of history. Thanks Mr McQueen for this cinematic contribution that provided us the truth of it. This speaks the voice of thousands of innocent souls who were victimized by Slave trade. It seems the souls are crying for justice still. The director have carefully crafted human emotions of helplessness, fear, and egoism with excellence. The depiction is very powerful, has the power to move you, make you heavy with sadness. Only positive thing shown in the film is the climax when Solomon returns home safe and sound. Others are just the brutal tale of slavery.

The film starts with Solomon who was a free man, a musician by profession, having his family, was a happy man until he was sold into slavery by trickery. Then his hellish journey begins, a journey where Blacks (men,women, children) were worse than animals, had no right of man, were exploited physically, mentally sexually and so on. People even justifies their gruesomeness by citing verses of Old Testament. Slaves were solaced by their colleague slaves in their distress but all were really helpless. Because the masters carry their legal papers in one hand and scriptures on the other hand. Solomon was grief stricken in his new experience, horrified by the slave trade. And he finally stood as the leading figure in it's abolition. The film doesn't go to the abolition chapter, rather details the brutality of slavery.

The director has used both suggestive and direct methods to imply the failure of white people as masters and their egoistic traits to fulfill their grudges against the blacks. The infamous scene where the master beats up his girl slave is still heart wrenching. It will tear you up, make your eyes sob. It also showed that not all whites are evil, there are some who really cared for their slave as their own families. So who is to blame ? The real problem lies in the slave trade itself. Thousands of people forming the government has supported slave trade as a means to run society smoothly. And the evil took advantage of it. So, a phrase "A few rotten apples spoils the bunch" is exact to this situation. So the bunch had to be changed in time.

Still today there's slave in modern world, but it is not legalized through. So every person is free today despite we serve different masters differently. There will always be master slave issues in the world. 12 years a slave depicts the brutal story of the blacks within that frame, nevertheless a film where pessimistic flavors outweighs positivity. So it's a 7/10.

A 74/100.