The reason I had never seen “12 Years a Slave” until now is paradoxically the same one for why I finally decided to watch it; it’s painful. But that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? For Martin Luther King Day, it seemed fitting to honor the man and his cause not by picking a random quote to tweet out, but to subject myself to the horrors of everything he fought against. By the time he left his mark on this country, slavery had been outlawed for a century. But it’s all too easy to dismiss the inhumane cruelty the Black people suffered in America for an eternity until something better came along that still isn’t nowhere near enough as the distant past. Steve McQueen and John Ridley don’t take pity on their audience, and neither should they. No serious director in the modern era has ever genuinely glorified slavery, but it’s rare that anyone tackles the topic with this much righteous anger and hurt. No, this is a tough one to suffer through, and all the more important for it. I should have watched it long ago.

Picking Solomon Northup, a free Black man living in New York in the 1840s as the protagonist adds to the power of this story. He was prosperous and had a family before he was captured, tortured and shipped southward to be sold. The implied question is obvious. Just imagine for one second, you go about your business one day and the next one you are in chains and someone’s property. The inhumanity is hard to fathom. As an educated man and talented violinist, Solomon, who is rechristened Platt, quickly manages to work himself into the good graces of his first owner, William Ford, but antagonizes the overseer, a particularly insufferable Paul Dano. He is sold to Edwin Epps, a drunkard and abominable character, a wannabe good Christian who waves his piety in the faces of his slaves as he abuses and torments them. On his platform, it’s a daily struggle simply to survive.

The actors deserve praise across the board. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o carry the crux of the emotional burden of two people trapped in the violent mood swings of a madman. But it’s also no easy feat to play a part that requires you to spew vitriolic hatred, to subdue your conscience to deliver a performance of sheer malevolence. Michael Fassbender takes his cue from Ralph Fiennes in “Schindler’s List”, a similar personification of evil incarnate, whose even more damning humanity is occasionally brought to the surface thanks to a toxic obsession with a woman that goes against everything he claims to believe. His wife, played by a venomous Sarah Paulson, can’t let her frustrations out on her husband, so she instead mistreats the slave she believes to be responsible for his lack of attentiveness.

And then there is Benedict Cumberbatch as Ford, whose descendants took issue with his depiction as a spineless pushover, who can’t keep his mutinous overseers in check. The message here is obvious. There is no such thing as a good slaver. Anyone who views his fellow man as property deserves no credit for their occasional moments of decency. I think that is a fair point. On the other hand, there is another message here towards the end that also makes “12 Years a Slave” a film for allies to take to heart. Never justify your inaction by claiming that you can’t do anything to help anyway, that your contribution is too trivial to matter. After all, one good deed made all the difference in the life of Solomon Northup.