It's hard to resist comparing "12 Years a Slave" with "The Butler."

Both are based on real men and their stories — "The Butler" is an insider's look at the black American experience from the mid 20th century to about the time Barack Obama became president. "12 Years a Slave" — which won three Oscars this week, including best picture — is an outright, unapologetic indictment of the heinous crimes committed against blacks in the Deep South prior to the American Civil War. "The Butler" has pockets of pop-entertainment respite but "12 Years" is relentlessly committed to depicting a world divided into slave-owners and slaves, privileged and deprived. Both cover subject matter of enormous historical significance. But "12 Years" is often too painful to sit through, and some scenes will haunt you for days.

Director Steve McQueen ("Shame") pulls out all the stops as the story piles atrocity after atrocity onto Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a black man from Upstate New York. In 1841, Northup was in Washington, D.C., when he was drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery, winding up on a New Orleans plantation with a hundred other slaves. An accomplished violinist and a carpenter by trade, Northup must toil in the fields from dawn to dusk, feigning illiteracy and hiding his New York origins, all for the sake of survival. Over a decade goes by before he meets a Canadian abolitionist who hears his story, and notifies his family.