"12 Years A Slave"; why you should go see this movie.

The release of "12 Years a Slave" is something of a major historical-cultural event in the US, being that Slavery is the most abhorrent chapter in America's history. The film, which opens Friday with an A-list cast—Nigeria’s own; Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt--is based on the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped in 1841 in Washington and sold into slavery in New Orleans. Uncompromising and extremely violent, "12 Years" refuses to downplay the racism, brutality and crude Darwinian mind-set that typified the "peculiar institution."

This is nothing like "Django Unchained," which was a blend of spaghetti Western, Blaxploitation flick and whatever else popped into Quentin Tarantino's genre-fevered brain. Neither is it anything like last year's "Lincoln," a film that was about emancipation but was so genteel in its approach, it skipped the part about plantation culture.

"12 Years a Slave" is easily the most hard-hitting portrayal of slavery since the 1977 TV blockbuster "Roots." It is the kind of film that many people will avoid, in part because of its depiction of everything from the surrealism of slave markets to whippings, rapes, hangings and the myriad ways in which slave owners terrorized and ruled over their property.

A people that refuse to confront their past are a people in denial. "12 Years A Slave" startles the viewer like a slap in the face, and the film is even more astonishing since it is the work of Steve McQueen, a black British director who said during a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival that he was particularly interested in the subject because it "is about how to survive an unfortunate situation." Yet he also admitted that "I made this movie because I want to tell a story about slavery and a story that hasn't been given a platform in cinema. ... If that starts a conversation, wonderful."

That conversation has long been virtually ignored by the mass media, which has treated the subject of slavery as if it were the bastard child of American history rather than an original sin that must be faced.

"12 years a slave"; a must watch if you ask me.