Amistad Review
by Curtis Edmonds (blueduck AT hsbr DOT org)March 21st, 1998
by Curtis Edmonds -- [email protected]
There's a scene, late in Amistad, where lawyer Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) is trying to explain the American legal system to his West African client, Cinque (Djimon Hounsou). Cinque, having never heard of the appeals process, is enraged when Baldwin tries to explain that the Supreme Court will now have to decide whether Cinque and his fellow African refugees will go free or be executed for revolting against their captors. Baldwin explains that Cinque is "almost" free, which prompts Cinque to scream, "Almost!" again and again in rage and frustration. (At least that's what I think he's saying, as almost all of Cinque's lines are in the Mende dialect.)
Amistad is a well-made, exceptionally well-acted, and skillfully directed film about a great historical story, but it's a victim of its own quality. Amistad is a good movie, an Oscar contender, even, but with its pedigree, with its starpower, with the resonance of its story, you would expect this to be a great movie. And it's almost a great movie. While that word -- almost -- is not as frustrating for you and me at the movies as it is for Cinque and his pirate crew, it's frustrating enough.
Amistad is at its most powerful in depicting the voyage of Cinque to America. After a brutal kidnapping from his village, and harrowing and murderous journey from West Africa on the a Portuguese slaver, Cinque manages to break free of his chains on the slave deck of the Spanish ship La Amistad, kill his oppressors, and attempt to steer the ship back to Africa. The action sequences are powerful and deeply disturbing, evoking all the horror and pity of slavery. Unforunately, the real meat of the movie takes place ashore, in a series of courtrooms and legal manuevers. It's sort of like Perry Mason meets Roots.
Now, don't get me wrong, here. I'm a lawyer. I love this kind of stuff. And for me, anyway, it's a bonus to see Matthew McConaughey in the courtroom again after his performace as Jake Brigance in A Time to Kill. But there is just so much courtroom wrangling and arguing and cross-examination that it detracts from what the movie is really about. Even the resolute Cinque, who disrupts one trial by shouting, "Give us free!", over and over again, is reduced by the end of the movie to quizzing lawyers Baldwin and former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) about jurisdictional questions. And by the climax of the movie, a quirky, overlong speech by Adams, we're all as tired of the legal process as Cinque is. (It's a measure of the screenplay's awareness of the legal process that former Justice Harry Blackmun was tapped to play the part of the Chief Justice.)
The problem with Amistad is that it tries to do too much and leaves too much left undone. Amistad spends, for example, a lot of time on historical political intrigue. While pertinent to the legal back-and-forth, it isn't very interesting, and wastes the talents of fine actors David Paymer, Anna Paquin, and Nigel Hawthorne -- not to mention that America's Finest Actor, Morgan Freeman, is given a suprisingly slim role as a Boston abolitionist working towards Cinque's freedom. There's also a surprising amount of time spent on John Quincy Adams and his supposed struggle with the memory of his father, President John Adams -- which doesn't quite ring true. (John Quincy Adams, while a mediocre President, was one of America's most accomplished diplomats, possibly America's greatest Secretary of State, and served ably in the House of Representatives after his term in the White House.)
Amistad is at its best when Djimon Hounsou is on screen. McConaughey's character calls Cinque "the greatest man living in chains", and Hounsou's indominitable Cinque exudes greatness and dignity, even in chains. In a world all too quick to write him off as a savage, Cinque gives us an example of courage, humility, strength, and resolve. Hounsou plays his role brilliantly, especially considering that we don't know what the heck he's saying most of the time. (Amistad is stingy with subtitles for some reason.) But we always know what Cinque is feeling and thinking, thanks to Hounsou's expressive performance. Amistad's chief failure is that it takes the focus of the movie off of Cinque and on the legal and political issues.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in relating the story of his arrest in The Gulag Archipelago, asked why, exactly, the Russian people never rose up and fought the KGB agents that came to arrest them in the middle of the night. He sadly concluded that "we didn't love freedom enough." Amistad, by telling the story of one man's fight against slavery, reminds all of us that freedom is precious, worth fighting for, worth dying for. It is a noble effort by a great director to deliver a powerful message. However, just as Cinque's efforts at freedom were hampered and delayed by legal and political manueverings, Amistad is hampered in telling its tale by the memory of those same maneuvers. A good movie, yes, and almost a great movie.
Rating: A
--
Curtis "BlueDuck" Edmonds
[email protected]
The Hollywood Stock Brokerage and Resource
http://www.hsbr.org/brokers/blueduck/
"I don't want to study law," she said with the
same tone as if she had been saying, "I don't
want to turn into a cockroach."
-- Mark Helprin, "A Soldier of the Great War"
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
