About a 1839 mutiny
aboard a slave ship that is traveling towards the northeastern coast of
America. Much of the story involves a court-room drama about the free man who
led the revolt.
Directed
by:
The
movie “Amistad” is based on a true story. This movie was depicted and focuses
much more about illegal slavery of the African natives and how they could be
freed. Searching and finding for answers is very much challenging and
frustrating to the persons who volunteered their selves to help the victims. Slavery could, I
suppose, be seen largely as a matter of laws and property--at least to those
benefitting from it. This
legal distinction is not made as clear as it could have been; the international
slave trade had been outlawed by treaties by 1839, the year of the landmark
Amistad incident, but those who were already slaves remained the property of
their masters--as did their children. The moral hair-splitting underlying that
distinction is truly depraved, but on it depends the defense of Cinque, the
leader of the Africans, and his fellow mutineers.
The film opens on the ship Amistad, where Cinque (Djimon Hounsou)
leads the rebellion to fight against the Spanish crew of the ship taking them
to a Havana slave market to another destination in Cuba. He was able to free
himself from shackles and release his fellow prisoners. Bloodsheds are
everywhere as cruelty fighting back and angered dominated in the scene. Leaving
two men who bought them for the reason they promised to take them back and
guide the ship to Africa where they came from. But betrayal arises between them
and instead they guide it into U.S. waters, and the Africans find themselves in
an American court.
Fortunately,
it is a Northern court, or they would have little chance at all. They are unfortunate
at first with their defense team, which is led by Roger Baldwin (Matthew
McConaughey), a real estate lawyer who bases his case on property law and
only slowly comes to see his clients as human beings. The cause is supported by
two Boston abolitionists, a former slave named Joadson (Morgan Freeman)
and an immigrant named Tappan (Stellan
Skarsgard). And eventually, on appeal, former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins)
argues eloquently for the freedom of the men.
“Amistad,” as compared to Spielberg's “Schindler's
List,” is not just simply an argument against immorality. Both movies are showing
of the evilness of slavery and the Holocaust at those rigid times. Both films
are about the ways of good men who tries to work realistically within an evil
system to spare a few of its victims. Schindler's strategies are ingenious and
suspenseful, and lead to a more gripping and powerful film than the legal
tactics in “Amistad,” where lawyers in powdered wigs try to determine the
origin of men whose language they do not speak. “Schindler’s List” works better
as narrative because it is about a risky deception, while “Amistad” is about
the searching for the truth that, if found, will be considered as a small consolation
to the millions of existing slaves.
I was horrible with my emotions in “Amistad” where
there was a scene of food shortage on the ship. There were weaker captives
chained together and thrown down into the ocean leaving them drowning. It was
as I felt my heart crumped and my eyes were unable to seek justice for those
poor and innocent Africans. Another sequence in which the mechanics of the
slave trade are examined as Africans captures members of enemy tribes and sells
them to slave traders. A scene where Cinque sees African violets in John Quincy
Adams' greenhouse and is seized with homesickness and Cinque's memory of his
wife left in Africa.
“Amistad” the way it provides faces and names for its
African characters, whom the movies so often make into faceless victims was the
most valuable part. Cinque stands out as the leader of the captives emerges as
a powerful individual who once-free farmer and has lost his wife and family. He
could not speak English, but amazingly learns a little while in prison.
Luckily,
they found a translator who helps in bridging them to understand him and helps
him express his dismay at a legal system that may free him but will not affirm
the true nature of the crime against him. To see its contradictions, he learns
enough of Western civilization, as in a scene where a fellow captive uses an
illustrated Bible to explain how he can identify with Jesus.
And
there is a touching scene between lawyer and client in which Joadson at last
talks to Cinque as a man and not as a piece in a puzzle. “Give us free!” Cinque
cries in a powerful moment in the courtroom, indicating how irrelevant a “not
guilty” verdict would be to the real facts of his case. 
Djimon
Hounsou's (Cinque) performance depends largely on his screen presence, which is
formidable. Some of the other performances are disappointing. I was surprised
how little importance or screen time was given to the Morgan Freeman character,
who in his few scenes indicates the volumes that remain concealed. I thought he
would be the man who could save the Africans from slavery but it seems like he
was just only part of the movie as a decoration so that some people would be
interested to watch the movie as he is one of the fine actors who has a heart
touching and one of a kind movies.
Matthew McConaughey's character is necessarily
unfocused as the defense attorney; he proceeds from moral blindness to a light
that surprises no one, and while we are happy for him we are not, under the
circumstances, much moved.
Nigel Hawthorne plays
President Martin Van Buren, who is portrayed as a spineless compromiser who
wants only to keep the South off his back.
Anthony Hopkins’ powerful performance as old John
Quincy Adams, who just speaks for 11 minutes in defense of the defendants, and
holds the courtroom (and the audience) spellbound. It was considered as one of
the great movie courtroom speeches. It was really the heart of the film. It captures
the mind and heart of viewers bringing them to a real courtroom. But in
praising it, I touch on the film's great weakness: It is too much about the law
and not enough about the victims.
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