Amistad

It’s taken me almost a month, but I finally saw the new Spielberg movie. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed. It was not a bad movie at all. In fact it was very good, but it wasn’t as powerful or moving as I thought it would be. I’ll get to that later, though.

First, the synopsis. We start off on the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship that is taken over by the Africans it picked up. Then, of course, tragedy strikes when they trust a couple of the Spaniards that they spared to get them back to Africa. They betray them and turn them in as mutineers to the next ship they come across. In America, Theodore Joadson and Tappan (Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgard) take up the cause of the Africans. They are the editors (I think) of an underground anti-slavery newspaper.

They try to get John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins in one of the best performances of his career) to be their lawyer, but he decides to let them go it alone. Along the way Mr. Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) pops up and he becomes their lawyer. He’s a young upstart (what was that again?–sorry, Marx Bros. reference) who is pretty inexperienced, but he’s got what it takes. They choose a leader for the Africans in Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), but he says that they don’t really have or need a leader. They are all different people who have different needs. McConaughey wins the case, but the President, Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) wants to be re-elected, so he gets a new judge for the case. Eventually, they make it to the Supreme Court and Adams has a moving soliloquy.

The cast is, of course, great. Freeman is amazing as is Hopkins. He’s the only person who could beat Robin Williams as Best Supporting Actor in my opinion. Skarsgard does a great job as the slavery-hater who only seems to want the Africans to be martyred. It’s good to see McConaughey in a real role after Contact. (As much as I liked that movie he had not place in it.) Anna Paquin (the little Oscar winner from The Piano) has a small (and I do mean small) role as the 11 year-old Queen of Spain. Pete Postlethwaite also shows up as a prosecuting attorney. He’s really getting to be one of my favorite character actors lately. The other big surprise is that Darren E. Burrows has a small role as one of the people who claim the slaves as their own. All you fellow “Northern Exposure” fans should at least recognize the face, if not the name: It’s Ed! As soon as he showed up I almost yelled out, in “Cheers” fashion, “EEEEDDD!”

I guess the really big surprise in this one is the African leader, Djimon Hounsou. He really is fairly amazing. If the rumors are true that he was found on the street, I would be pretty surprised. A friend of mine is an actor and he doesn’t believe this for a second. He figures he had an agent and, he may have been living on the street, but he wasn’t found on the street. Anyway, he’s a great actor and deserves to get more big roles like this one. I’m sure he will, too. Anyone who gets lead billing in a Spielberg movie is bound to become big. As I said, the movie is very good, as are most of Spielberg’s films. The problem is that he uses his usual style. There’s a scene in one of the courtrooms where Cinque stands up and starts shouting, in very simple English, “Give us free! Give us free!” The music swells and we are supposed to tear up and think, “Yes! Give them free! Let them go!” Instead, I was thinking, “Hey, Steve! This is cool in your sci-fi and adventure movies, but not in a movie this important.” It kind of undermined the whole point of the film.

One think that was kind of strange was the amount of violence. Spielberg usually tries to keep this to a minimum. Even Schindler’s List was pretty non-violent, if I remember right. I haven’t seen it since it’s theatrical release, but I don’t remember being shocked by graphic violence. (Well, I’m not shocked by it hardly ever, but I don’t expect it from Spielberg.) I guess it was needed, just different.

It was a great movie and is definitely worth seeing. No doubt about that. I don’t mean to dog it at all. I just wanted it to be better than it was. It’s an important movie, nonetheless. It’s another one that should be seen by all Americans, African or otherwise.