From left: Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Chiwetel Ojeifor It's been three weeks since I saw "12 Years A Slave" by British director Steve McQueen. It's taken me this long to muster the strength to write about my response to it. Whether you've seen it or heard about it, you've probably got an opinion about the story, and possibly about the way the story is told. I'm going to assume that most people reading this accept the truth of the story. But I also suspect that even people of a liberal persuasion (not the sort of people who call the Civil War "the War of Northern Aggression") might hesitate about seeing this film, because of the extremely upsetting depiction of the racial violence. To wit: the kidnapping of a free man, a real person called Solomon Northup, upon whose memoir the film is based; a savage beating on his first night of captivity; a transported slave being knifed to death and tossed into the ocean; grown men, women, ...
Artist Philip Hartigan talks about art, interviews other artists, and more