10 Hardest-To-Watch Scenes In Cinema History

4. Patsy Is Whipped - 12 Years A Slave

As a motion picture experience, it's hard to beat 12 Years A Slave for outright harrowing. The true story of free man turned slave Soloman Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is filled with countless moments of horror, anguish and injustice, and Steve McQueen's movie does not shy away from showing each and every one of them in the most realistic way possible. The hardest scene to watch in 12 Years a Slave, then, is the one that sees slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) relentlessly whipped by Solomon on the orders of plantation owner Epps (Michael Fassbender). Not only is the inherent set-up downright tragic (Solomon being forced to brutally assault his friend), but the scene goes on and on and on as Patsey screams out - her back reduced to shreds when the cruel Epps decides to take over. The close-up of Patsey's shredded back afterwards is genuinely sick-inducing, and this shot cements the whole sequence as one of the most distressing in all of cinema. Not to mention that the sense of history - the knowledge that this stuff actually happened once upon a time - imbues everything you see with an added layer of shock that is near unbearable.