51 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
51 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
slavery is bad .
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after hundreds of years , we've finally figured that one out .
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this almost universal belief is the both the strength and weakness of director steven spielberg's latest " serious " film .
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during the late 1830s , a portuguese slave ship carries a cargo of black men and women kidnapped from their home on africa's west coast to cuba to be sold into slavery .
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fifty-three of them are stuffed into the " la amistad " ( from a spanish word for " friendship " ) by their new spanish owners .
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freeing himself from his chains , senge pieh ( djimon hounsou ) , renamed cinque by his masters , leads a bloody revolt .
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after killing most of the crew , the africans force the remaining sailors to return them to their home - or so they think .
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instead the ship heads up the coast to the united states .
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the amistad is boarded by an american naval ship and the revolutionaries are put on trial in connecticut for murder and piracy .
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the legal question becomes are they free men fighting justly for their freedom or are they property .
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if they are property , who do they belong to ?
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their masters ?
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the spanish government ?
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salvage rights of the officers who captured the ship ?
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the us government ?
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the defendants are pawns in several games .
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abolitionists theodore joadson ( morgan freeman ) and lewis tappan ( stellan skarsgard ) want to free them , but tappan sees them primarily as a means to further the cause .
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their lawyer roger baldwin ( matthew mcconaughey ) views the case as a simple one of property rights and a chance to make his share of legal fees .
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south carolina senator john c . calhoun ( arliss howard ) pursues the case for the political advancement of the southern states .
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president martin van buren ( nigel hawthorne ) is willing to force the result towards his own political ends .
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when the verdict looks to free the africans , van buren replaces the judge with one more sympathetic to his wishes .
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even that doesn't work and the new judge frees the kidnap victims .
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at the urging of calhoun , the president then appeals the case to the supreme court , populated by a majority of slave-owners .
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this little-known ( try finding it in any history text book ) incident from america's past would have gone down a darker path were it not for former president john quincy adams ( anthony hopkins ) who is persuaded to argue the case before the supreme court .
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the slavery issue is easy pickin's for spielberg .
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much like his " shindler's list " ( which followed " jurassic park " as this follows " lost world " ) , the moral sides are not difficult ones to choose .
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nazis and slave traders : both treat groups of others as less than human .
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it's not hard to see who the bad guys are .
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without that question to ponder , the director's job is more difficult .
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he has to make the story interesting .
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spielberg succeeds for the most part .
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the visual aspect of the film is beyond reproach .
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where the movie falls down is a bit more subtle .
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there are very few _people_ in the tale .
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in fact , cinque is the only character who is fleshed out .
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tappan and joadson are " abolitionists " : symbols but not humans .
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van buren is a weak politician but nothing else .
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the rest of the " slaves " barely exist other than dressing for the set .
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like many other films about people of color , almost all the major players are white .
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the film's salvation lies in the acting strength of everyone involved and the powerful presence of hounsou .
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the former model's first major role is a winner .
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without speaking more than five words of english , he conveys more emotion than most actors with a thousand lines of dialog .
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the other stand-out is hopkins who seems to be making a career out of portraying american presidents ( he also played the title role in " nixon " ) .
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the impassioned speech by the doddering old man who phases in and out of rationality is among the best court-room drama ever on the screen .
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there are some other great moments .
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especially impressive are the african's struggle to understand what is going on in the strange land .
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their interpretation of the bible based solely on the pictures and their own experiences is poignant .
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as grand as the epic is , it would have more impact had it focused more on the experience from the point of view of the africans .
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more humanity in the fight for humanity would have made it a four-star film .
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( michael redman has written this column for a real long time and is just now getting around to seeing some 1998 films . )
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