A good film to see on the ‘Glorious Fourth’. We both liked (?) and appreciated this Oscar-winning Best Film from last year documenting the travails of Solomon Northrup. (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an African-American free man stolen through nefarious means and sold into the sickness of racial slavery in the Deep South, a land of cotton and sugar. (Louisiana?). He suffers greatly the loss of his family, his freedom, and the respect he was held in his all-too-friendly and egalitarian Saratoga, New York. Excellent acting from all the principals, one of whom, Lupita Nyong’o won for Best Supporting Actress. Most stilted work from, sad to say, Brad Pitt, who co-produced. His Canadian accent doesn’t work well. Shows the range from kindly (but still slave-owning and deeply invested monetarily) to heartless brutes of slaveowners. The effects of slavery on slaves and whites/men and women, and the perverse system in its many varied forms are explored using the language of Northrup in his classic memoir. It is comforting to remember that some white folk, even a rare few in the South, struggled against this horrible system. Beautiful photography and horrible cruelty coexist in this look at those old cotton fields back home. See this one.