12 Years A Slave

8 January 2014 | 10:04 am | Matt MacMaster

McQueen is a brave filmmaker, and a very human one. His work is vital, and 12 Years A Slave is his best yet.

Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave is one of the finest films ever made about the American slave experience. It's a film that stares right into the abyss of human cruelty and doesn't blink. It's a powerful story about the weight of circumstance and the limit of our power to either confront or accept them.

Solomon Northup, a free man of the Northern States (pre-Civil War), is drugged and kidnapped. With no proof of identity he is shipped to New Orleans and endures over a decade of slavery at the hands of several owners. The ensemble cast provide fantastic performances throughout, in particular Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender as slave and master respectively. Fassbender's Epps burns off the screen as a drunk and a religious pragmatist. Ejiofor's Northup, meanwhile, desperately reaches out to anyone and everyone, even his masters, using all his human faculties. He seeks an answer where there is none, but refuses to stop looking, much like McQueen.

McQueen is a brave filmmaker, and a very human one. His work is vital, and 12 Years A Slave is his best yet.