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Steve McQueens 12 Years A Slave could have merely satisfied itself with being an unblinking see at the horrors of the American slave trade and that would have been arguably enough to attain greatness and artistic value. The film, adapted by John Ridley from the personal memoirs of Solomon Northup, could have merely set out to be a defining American film about slavery and that would have arguably been enough.  But the describe has something more morally complicated on its mind.

Its story is openly despairing and unthinkably tragic, but more than that it is a mediation on the moral excuses that societies and cultures make for themselves to interpret obvious acts of evil. The film is a relatively straight-forward telling of the many years that Solomon Northup spent in unlawful bondage after he was kidnapped from New York and sold into bondage in Georgia in 1841.  Mr. Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in what should finally be a star-making performance, is the star of his own story, and once again we have a mainstream studio release that doesnt pander by having black characters basically play supporting roles in their own fables.

The portray is unflinchingly brutal, both physically and emotionally, and there are frankly times in the first third where it flirts with being misery porn. But right when were wallowing in sheer brutality, McQueen gives us something interesting to chew on beyond just empathetic horror. There is real weight to the early debates among the captured prisoners about whether to risk death in order to escape versus survival at all dehumanizing costs. And there is painful nuance to how the various slaves locate a certain relative morality in a plainly immoral situation.

The first slaveholder we meet, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a walking contradiction that personifies the times and Id argue to the films deeper layers.  He is seemingly friendly and decent man who nonetheless owns slaves and thinks tiny of separating a mother from her screaming children (It couldnt be helped.) for the sake of maintaining his own financial security. Northrup grows to like him, determining that he is a decent man under the circumstances. Its no secret that racism was basically invented as a way for Christians to interpret owning human beings while yet holding themselves up as dutiful worshipers.

In all society where evil occurs on a cultural level, there are those seemingly good people who find a way to justify participation or indirect enrichment and yet save their alleged moral tall ground. We see slave owners who are seemingly nice and those (such as Michael Fassbender and Sarah Paulson) who are cartoonishly cruel. We look a slave that used the system to their advantage, such as Alfre Woodard as a slave-turned-mistress-turned wife of her would-be owner, now enjoying the luxuries of an upper-class existence. We look another, Patsy (Lupita Nyongo), condemned to unending hell for having caught the maters eye. Even a character who shows up towards the end to preach abolitionism is merely content to roll his eyes at the practice, rather than pursuing its end. The film examines not just the obvious sin of forced bondage but also the varying ways in which people, slaves and masters alike, thrived or suffered under the institution.

It is worth noting still again that Martin Luther King Jr.s last speech in 1968 asked if America was going to hell because of its role in the Vietnam war and for its social and economic inequities. Its this examination of moral relativism that makes 12 Years A Slave more than just a slideshow of slaverys inherent cruelty. In hindsight we decry the decade-long captivity of Mr. Northrup yet make excuses to justify, for example, the various (and mostly innocent) detainees that spent years locked up thanks to the post-9/11 judicial black hole. We correctly turn our nose at those who sat by or profited during the slave trade, yet will our good-grandchildren cast a similar judgment on us for the broken wrought via our occupation of Iraq under false pretenses?

12 Years A Slave is a shattering work of genuine art, a nuanced and thoughtful look at an unquestionable and unforgivable crime. It is openly devestating and often almost unbearably depressed. Taken at face value, it is a splendidly acted and potently written character drama, one of the best films of the year without ask. The film is more than just a superbly made and incredibly important historical document. McQueen and Ridley use the horrors of the slave trade to force us to acknowledge the generational evils that we ignored or turned a blind eye to.  Its not just important or profound, but downright subversive in its judgment.

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Prisoners begins as a genuinely compelling and authentic bit of little-town Americana, as two families meet up for the Thanksgiving holiday. Hugh Jackman, Mario Bello, Terrence Howard, and Viola Davis convincingly play the friendly of close friends that dont need to force it, and they have a genuinely relaxed chemistry in the opening moments that earns our investment.  So when their respective younger daughters, both around six-years old, go missing while walking from one house to another, our empathy is earned and our interest is sealed. The opening moments of the investigation have a filthy, unflashy air of authenticity, as lead cop Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) centers on a mentally-impaired young man who seems like a plausible suspect.

But once that suspect is more-or-less cleared, and an enraged Keller (Jackman) decides to abduct young Alex (Paul Dano) and torture the truth out of him, the film starts to deflate just when it should be cooking. The film only remembers the whole Keller is keeping Alex in a filthy makeshift cell when the film needs us to recall, depriving us of a sense of urgency for this seemingly key plan thread.  While the portray arguably wants to raise What would you do if it was your child? moral questions, the describe so effectively convinces us of Alexs likely innocence that what we see is not Keller committing a moral wrong for the greater good, but rather a delusional father torturing a potentially innocent man while the police follow more convincing leads.