A true story, directed by Steven Spielberg
as his first film for DreamWorks SKG, tells the frightening and moving tale about
a group of Africans taken as slaves and transported illegally to America where they
were imprisoned in 1829.
Overseen by the audience, but loved by the critics,
"Amistad" is considered as one of Hollywood's most important movies.
Brilliant direction by Steven Spielberg,
great acting from some of Hollywood's best actors, such as
Morgan Freeman,
Matthew McCountney,
Anthony Hopkins and introducing
Djimon Honsou, superb music by John Williams and
cinematography from "Schindler's List" - Janusz Kaminski. All this
easily make "Amistad" a magnificent piece of art in moviemaking.
The first 7 minutes of the film show us the revolting slaves, onboard the Spanish ship "La Amistad" (friendship), killing in overwhelming rage everyone
of the ship's crew (except of the captain and the mate).
This violent scene, showing the Africans as wild animals will become totally understandable later in the movie,
when we'll get to see how the Africans were treated by the crew.
And we will understand these people who tried to revenge those who died,
and those who survived on the ship of hell!
The chosen African leader, who we know as Sengbe (and later Cinque) is played by
Djimon Honsou and deliver magnificent performance worth much more than an
Oscar statuette. During the whole film he speaks only 5 words in English, and jet, we understand everything he is saying,
because the words come from the heart and not from the mind.
The Africans want the remaining crew to sail back to Africa. The captain and the mate only gave the impression that they were
sailing back, while they sat sail for America...
As
"La Amistad" reaches the American coast, the Africans are captured and imprisoned.
The film shows how these innocent men, women and
children were treated
by the white people, what they had to go through.
Later in
the movie they get help from a priest Mr.Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard),
Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman), an ex-slave that has all his
life tried to abolish slavery through laws and political systems, not quite
militant (jet). These two men receive assistance from an attorney that is
looking at slaves as property and is only interested in how to win the case, and
to gain money from it. This man (played by Mathew McCountney) is an perfectly ordinary man in an
extra-ordinary situation, gets more human later in the
film, when he actually understands what he is fighting for.
An ex-president, John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), who by the
way delivers an extra ordinary performance, is gradually compelled
to help these Africans; he was a very moral man.
Together they started building up the defense for
these Africans, who already are the major political issue in USA as well as in
Spain, where the outcome could be a civil war !
Although the film has many extremely powerful
scenes that are very hard to watch, there are two sequences in particular that made
enormous impression on me and forever burned into my mind:
The first sequence is Cinques flashback, when he remembers what happened when
he was captured. The scenes on the ship are unbearable:
Surrounded by blood, pain and screams, a mother holding a child jumps overboard, choosing a
life in death, rather than a death in life ;
The crew underestimated the provisions, and the film shows how they dealed with this
delicate problem - the slaves were simply thrown overboard !
The second scene
is John Quincey Adams' speech in court, about human rights.
The cast is big and professional, and
everyone are giving extraordinary performances. With a
brilliant direction, perfect cinematography and great music, this film becomes a perfect, frightening picture about
how things really were, very close to the title: masterpiece.
" (...) This is the most important
case ever in this court, because what it infact concerns is the very nature of
man (...)
John Quincey Adams,
"AMISTAD"
I think this film is very important to see
for everyone. It is an intellectual, magnificent piece of moviemaking, with enormous depth about one
of darkest and terrible events in the history of mankind.
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