Amistad
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins,
Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey.
I get the feeling this was meant to be Spielberg’s follow-up to Schindler’s List that would win him more Oscars and cement his reputation as the Big Issue film-maker of our time. The film has all the ingredients of an epic: it’s long (160mins). It also has big-name actors, it concerns important characters in an important period of American history, it deals with the issues of slavery and freedom and it is Based on a True Story. However, I was left with the impression that he tried too hard.
It begins in 1839 aboard the Spanish ship La Amistad, with the African slaves killing their captors and turning the ship back towards Africa, but they are captured by an American vessel. Once they are in America, the movie turns into a fairly standard courtroom drama, with the various parties trying to prove that the forty-four captives are Spanish property, American murderers, Cuban salvage or free Africans.
On the case for the Africans is Roger Baldwin, an irritating young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey, who also played that irritating young evangelist in Contact). Unfortunately, President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) is campaigning for re-election and wants to avoid a Civil War over slavery (ah, the benefit of hindsight!) and, more importantly, anything that would adversely affect his chances (ah, ditto! (he lost)), so he appoints southern slave-owner judges. Fortunately, riding to the rescue is former President John Quincy Adams (admittedly well played by Anthony Hopkins) who never opens his mouth but to let forth with profound sayings on truth, justice and the American Way. Perhaps the most interesting performance is by Djimon Hounsou as Cinque, the Mende-speaking spokesperson for the Africans who fights with dignity for the freedom of his people and struggles to understand the ways of the American legal system. All through the film are little comparisons of the cultures, highlighting the differences, but mostly the similarities of the two, but it gets a bit blatant. It’s a good story, with some good acting, but the telling is over the top in some places, trying too hard to be great and not making it.
Adela Moore
