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Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitized history lesson,Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most ofSchindler's List(and, later,Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut-and-dry genre piece. Characters are easy Hollywood stereotypes--"villains" like the Spanish sailors or zealous abolitionists are drawn one-dimensionally and sneered upon. And Spielberg can't suppress his gifted eye, undercutting normally ugly sequences, such as the terrifying slave passage, which is shot as a gorgeous, well-lit composition. At its core,Amistadis a traditional courtroom drama, centered by a tired, clichéd narrative: a struggling, idealistic young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) fighting the crooked political system and saving helpless victims. Worse yet, Spielberg actually takes the underlying premise of his childhood fantasy,E.T.and repackages it for slavery. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the West African rebellion, is presented much like the adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and trying to find his way home. McConaughey is a grown-up Elliot who tries communicating complicated ideas such as geography by drawing pictures in the sand or language by having Cinque mimic his facial expressions. Such stuff was effective for a sci-fi fantasy about the communication barriers between a boy and a lost alien; here, it seems like a naive view of real, complex history.--Dave McCoy
Now More Relevant Than Ever Before AMISTAD is as relevant today as it was when it first came out in 1997. In at least one respect it is now even more relevant.
As most viewers realize early in this film, it was not designed to provide audiences with pleasant entertainment. Rather, it is a kind of didactic drama, serving--like Euripides' ancient Greek play THE TROJAN WOMEN (415 B.C.E.) and the recent George Clooney film SYRIANA (2005)--both as a reminder of a nation's flawed past actions and as a plea to be better in the future. Insofar as racism and racial violence are still thriving in our country--often encouraged by some politicians and pundits in low places--AMISTAD's main message is still needed, and the film is still an effective means of awakening people to the injustice of granting some citizens a place of special privilege while other citizens are kept subordinate.
By a fluke of historical fate, however, this film can draw our attention to things that were not in the forefront of its makers' minds at that time. Viewing AMISTAD in the winter of 2008, I was struck by the repulsive actions of President Martin Van Buren, who hungered so strongly for a second term that he repeatedly tried to deny justice to the wronged men and women of the slave ship--even intervening to have their favorable verdict overturned by the Supreme Court (which at that time seemed to be stacked in his favor by a margin of 7 to 2). Do our presidents ever commit such immoral acts nowadays? Does anyone of any party doubt it? And do the members of our Supreme Court ever make their decisions on the basis of "party loyalty" despite what our laws and our Constitution may say to the contrary? Are we ever in danger of having a majority of such false justices making vital, life-altering decisions? Has such a thing happened within living memory? Does anyone of any party doubt this? Does anyone believe that President Van Buren was the very last president to try to manipulate matters as far as laws and the separation of our government's branches are concerned? If any of us disagree on the answers to these questions, it is only about the names of the guilty parties and/or the relative degrees of their guilt.
And yet, within this film we are shown that, on the issue of human rights and "the belief that all men are created equal," 8 of the 9 justices of the Supreme Court in Van Buren's day had the intelligence and integrity to vote to uphold what our Founding Fathers had promised our citizens and had stated about human beings everywhere. And while I found many other parts of this film deeply moving--the parts which had been scripted, directed, and acted to press my emotional buttons on the issues of slavery and the rights of all human beings--in my recent viewing of this film I was also very deeply moved by the sight of our nation's much criticized Supreme Court doing the right thing. In line with the other messages of the film, this suggests that our citizens have a right to expect AND a duty to demand no less from our present Supreme Court as well as from all future Supreme Courts.
The British politician Edmund Burke is supposed to have said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men [and good women] to do nothing." Although no one has ever been able to verify where or when he may have said this--or whether some other person said it who has been wrongly forgotten--it is still a valid maxim, one well worth remembering whenever we are tempted to let someone else do our thinking or fighting for us.
And now, coming down off my soapbox, here is one tiny piece of art trivia: the biblical illustrations shown in AMISTAD were done by a French artist named Gustav Doré. And although the main action of the film takes place between 1839 and 1841, Doré was not born until 1832, and his biblical illustrations were not published until 1865 in French Bibles--and were published three or four years later in English Bibles. Does this destroy any of the fabric of the film? No, of course not. Does it make me think any the less of this film? Certainly not. Its central message remains intact--and its new and unintended message about our presidents and our courts needing constant vigilance to keep them working properly is not affected in the least.
Great movie Great movie
Painful scenes of the terrible treatment of our African brothers and sisters, and a sad reminder of the brutalities of slavery.
"Based" on a true story Amistad is a powerful movie about a real incident that had a bearing on history. Let's start with some of the many positives: Spielberg is one of our era's most talented filmmakers and his skills are certainly on display here. The film is well acted by the entire cast, especially Hopkins as former president Adams and Freeman as an abolitionist businessman. These 2 actors are always good and Amistad is no exception. Where the film falters is when Spielberg takes "dramatic license". Putting it simply, when he lies. The real story should have been enough for a great movie so the truth shouldn't have to be stretched to overdramatize events. The slavetraders were lousy human beings without a doubt but they didn't dump half the slaves in the ocean. Adams never met any of the Africans he defended so well and their presence in a courtroom is not believable. The speeches made in the film do not reflect 1839-40 attitudes, they reflect current ones. This could have and probably should have been great. As it is, it is a well told story with too many half truths. 3.5 Stars.
