David Simon, the creator and writer of The Wire, agrees with the critical consensus that Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave is now the definitive film on American slavery:
(via The Browser)I’m fresh out of a theater in Santa Monica, California where I’ve watched 12 Years A Slave for the second time, having seen it several days ago on a laptop screen through a dedicated download. I’ll be honest. I wanted to write something after absorbing the narrative and the imagery the first time, but I was so wrought that I didn’t trust myself.
Had an American film actually addressed the original sin of our nationhood so bluntly, so honestly? Was the film really as careful and delicate and dispassionate with the historical reality? Was the restraint that I felt in the telling really there, or had the punches been carefully loaded as Hollywood is so apt to do?
On first viewing, I was simply startled by how genuinely fair the storytelling had been with the subject matter. Sadism and soullessness was balanced by moments of regret and conscience on the part of white characters. Accommodation and supplication on the part of Southern slaves was punctuated by instants of desperate courage and dignity.
On second viewing — with me in a darkened theater with a big screen, looking for the rough seams and filmic dishonesties — I emerged thinking precisely the same about this remarkable act of storytelling. This film didn’t cheat our national history. It didn’t allude to horror, nor did it revel in it. It marks the first time in history that our entertainment industry has managed to stare directly at slavery and maintain that gaze.
