December 10, 1997 | After getting the
profitable hack work of The Lost World out of his system, Steven
Spielberg makes a welcome return to higher ground with Amistad,
an epic drama that brings history to life and touches the heart. The
new movie isn't in the same league with Spielberg's personal best, the
awesomely brilliant Schindler's List. But very much like that
stunning tale of persecution, survival and triumph, Amistad crackles
with intelligence and thunders with passion as it illuminates and fascinates.
Working
from a screenplay by David Franzoni (with uncredited assistance from
Steven Zaillian), Spielberg once again examines a familiar subject from
a unique vantage point. This time, he contemplates the shameful history
of slavery in America by focusing on a relatively obscure episode that,
until now, has been neglected in most mainstream history courses. In
1839, 53 Africans held captive aboard a Cuba-bound Spanish schooner,
La Amistad, stage a bloody rebellion. They kill most of the crew, and
demand that two surviving slavetraders chart a course back to Africa.
Instead, the slavers steer the schooner north, and the Africans are
captured by a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of New Haven, Conn.
At
first, the mutineers, led by the proudly defiant Cinque (Djimon Hounsou),
are charged with murder. But the Spaniards claim the Africans as "property,"
and demand their immediate return. Others file counter-claims for the
human "salvage." When two abolitionists -- Theodore Joadson
(Morgan Freeman), an ex-slave, and Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard),
a somewhat condescending white associate -- seek legal representation
for the Africans, they find only a young real-estate attorney, Roger
Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) is willing to take the case.
Fortunately, the inexperienced Baldwin is able
to convince an initially skeptical judge that the Africans were illegally
captured and sold, and are entitled to freedom. Unfortunately, that
judgment is overturned, thanks to the intercession of, among others,
President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne). The case goes all the
way to the Supreme Court -- where it is argued by no less an orator
than former U.S. President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), who
comes to view Cinque as a man worthy of his respect.
Amistad
is more than willing to invoke dramatic license for the sake of satisfying
drama -- from all accounts, John Quincy Adams never really met Cinque
-- but the film is thoroughly persuasive as it provides a historical
context for the legal struggle at center stage. The plight of the 53
Africans is shown to be a major inconvenience for President Van Buren,
who must handle this political hot potato during his re-election campaign.
If the Africans win their case, presidential advisors warn, Van Buren
can forget about support from pro-slavery Southern states.
And
then, of course, there are the international ramifications to consider.
Queen Isbaella of Spain, portrayed as a spoiled brat by Anna Paquin
(The Piano), makes no secret of her mounting impatience as she
awaits the return of her country's "property."
Midway through, Amistad offers a different sort of history lesson.
In a 20-minute flashback as heart-wrenchingly horrifying as anything
in Schindler's List, Spielberg graphically details "Middle
Passage" -- a typical voyage of captive Africans aboard the Amistad.
Men, women and children are chained, starved, brutally beaten and methodically
dehumanized. When provisions run low, the slavers simply dump some of
their "excess cargo" overboard. That Cinque survives this
hell is a testament to his spirit -- and, by extension, to the spirits
of all those who endured such monstrous mistreatment.
Speaking
of Cinque: Special mention must be made of Djimon Hounsou's imposing
performance in this demanding role. Throughout Amistad, Hounsou
has only a few words of English dialogue as his character struggles
to communicate with his sympathetic defenders. (Cinque speaks in Mende,
his native African tongue, which is translated in subtitles for the
audience.) But through sheer force of screen presence, Hounsou (an African-born
former fashion model) conveys pride, fear and outrage with an eloquence
that goes far beyond words. Thanks largely to Hounsou, and to Spielberg's
empathetic direction, Amistad largely avoids the pitfall of seeming
like just another liberal feel-good drama about whites who help downtrodden
blacks.
A
few criticisms, most of them relatively minor, are in order. Abolitionists,
like everyone else, are fair targets for historical revisionists. And
the movie raises some provocative questions about the true motivation
of radicals such as Tappan. But why does Amistad frequently insist
on treating the deeply religious anti-slavery protesters as boobs? Granted,
this characterization lays the groundwork for the movie's funniest scene:
When a few of the activists gather outside the New Haven prison to sing
hymns, Cinque assumes they must be entertainers. Still, this caricature
seems out of place in a movie that otherwise treats matters of God and
man with respectful seriousness. It's made very clear, for example,
that one judge in the Amistad case was moved to render a favorable judgment
after being swayed by the tenets of his politically unfashionable Catholicism.
Anthony
Hopkins' performance as John Quincy Adams is a cunning mix of elocutionary
skill and twinkly eyed showmanship. But who did this poor guy's old-age
make-up? In a few shots, Hopkins looks like he's wearing more rouge
than a foppish hanger-on in Louis XV's court. And was it really necessary
to have Matthew McConaughey appear unshaven so often? OK, maybe razors
were hard to come by in 1839 New Haven. But even with the period-perfect
mutton-chops, McConaughey often appears as distractingly stubbly as
a male model in some trendy fashion photo spread.
These
details aside, Amistad runs aground only when Spielberg lacks
enough faith in his story -- and his storytelling -- to reject the temptation
for emotional overkill. Something similar happened near the end of Schindler's
List, when Oskar Schindler suddenly turned all weepy and self-recriminating
as he wondered aloud if, all things considered, he hadn't really done
enough for the Jews under his protection. Now, of course, you could
argue that, in real life, maybe Schindler really didn't do enough, or
at least not enough to keep from feeling guilty about sins of omission.
But on screen, Schindler's climactic outburst is so jarringly out of
sync with everything previously revealed about the character -- and,
worse, so out of sync with just about everything else in Spielberg's
superb movie -- that the scene comes across as a crude yank on the heartstrings.
In
Amistad, the manipulation is even more obvious, as Spielberg
attempts to intensify our response to key scenes -- most notably, Adams'
address to the Supreme Court -- by pouring great gooey gobs of John
Williams' intrusive musical score over the dialogue. It's almost as
though Spielberg wanted to shout: "Hey! Pay attention! This is
a big scene here!" Fortunately, the scenes usually are big enough
to transcend the sentimentality of their presentation. In fact, Amistad
as a whole is big enough, and accomplished enough, to make one willing
to forgive Spielberg for almost anything. Even for The Lost World.