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.
