Hard to imagine a more effective film about the soul-corrupting evil of the institution America was built on.

The scenes of physical violence are of course sickening, but you go in expecting those. You're already flinching for the whipping scenes. But it's the scenes that show how degrading and perverse the act itself of owning another human being are in some ways the most powerful--the long take in New Orleans at Giamatti's slave market house, the scenes of Fassbender making the slave dance in the middle of the night, etc.