impressive resilience in 12 years a slave

I was so impressed at the humility of Chiwetel Ejiofor when he received the BAFTA best leading actor award for playing Solomon Northup, and also when Steve McQueen accepted the BAFTA award for Best Film. It appeared that there was a reverence for the true story written down by Solomon over 150 years ago. So I braced myself for an important cinema experience... I can't say it was a comfortable 133 minutes, but the sheer brutality was mostly realistic and was somehow balanced by the brilliant visuals and sound track. Steve McQueen's artistic background was obvious and there were many stunning sunset panoramas of forests, rivers and plantations, contrasted by a distorted close up of a violin being tuned. It was a wonderful reflective escape from the dire reality. We initially meet Solomon as a devoted father and husband, living free in New York. He is lured by a two-week job as a musician, but is drugged and sold into slavery. He is renamed Platt and although he is horrified by his change in fortune, he quickly realises that he needs to manage his agression and retain some dignity. We are exposed to twelve years of violent racism and I was truly shocked at how self-righteous, pathetic and ugly the slave owners and their plastic wives were. So I was totally relieved when he met Brad Pitt, in the form of a Canadian abolitionist, who acted to change his life.