Amistad (1997): An Internet Review of Merit (review)

Haddan | Amistad (1997): An Internet Review of Merit Sally Hadden Florida State University [shadden@mailer.fsu.edu] asiaci (1997): An Internet Review of Merit Stephen Spielberg, director. Principal actors: Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, Djimon Hounsou, Sir Anthony Hopkins. Occasional subtitles, graphic violence, (running time: 152 minutes; rated R) Film & Historywishes to thank H-NET and H-LAW for permission to use this fine review ofa recent film. More discussion will follow in our pages, butthis review seemed like a very good starting point-both for its focus on the film and on the reception and promotion ofthe work. H-NET Film Review published by H-Law@msu.edu (January, 1 998). Copyright© 1 997 by ?-Net, all rights reserved. Attorney Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey, center), the first to defend the accused Africans, pleads their case before the jury. 62 I Film & History Regular Feature | Film Reviews This is a review in two parts. The first part of this review covers the film's content and offers some evaluation ofits utility for the classroom and its portrayal oflegal events in the Amistad case. The second part is about how the film Amistad has been marketed as history, and it addresses the use and abuse of historical material for filmmaking purposes. Film Content and Accuracy Amistad begins with the event that made that ship's history different from other slave ships: the gradual extraction of a nail from the ship which allowed Cinque (also known as Sengbe) to free first himself and then the other slaves on board. The first ten minutes are designed to evoke stark terror, as the freed slaves attack their Spanish captors, killing all but two ofthe ship's sailors, who they keep alive in order to sail back to Africa. The sailors' trick of sailing east by day and northwest by night eventually brings the Amistad to the coast of New York; there it is boarded by American sailors and taken to Connecticut, where Cinque and his band are jailed. Lewis Tappan and a fictional character, Theodore Joadson (an AfricanAmerican abolitionist) join forces to promote the cause of the Amistad captives; they are aided by Roger Baldwin, portrayed as an ambulance-chasing money-grubbing attorney who tries property cases and who sees the slaves, at least initially, as simply a different form ofproperty dispute. In the beginning Tappan and Joadson are not eager to have Baldwin's assistance, but they accept his legal efforts in the end, and he proves persuasive enough to win the first two trials. Through the course of those two trials Baldwin's attitude towards Cinque and the Africans changes, and by the picture's end he has become a committed abolitionist. The initial trial is before a Connecticut judge and jury with claims presented by the Spanish slavers (rightful owners of Cuban-born slaves with a bill of sale), the American sailors (salvage on the high seas), and the US government (honoring their 1795 treaty obligations to return the ship and slaves to the Spanish government); lurking in the background is a Spanish diplomat who intends to see the slaves returned to Cuba to be executed for murder. Initial efforts to speak with Cinque and the other Amistad survivors fail, as a blundering linguist cannot help the lawyers understand what the Africans are saying. Without direct testimony from the slaves themselves to help their case, Baldwin and Joadson search the Amistad looking for physical evidence to show that the ship came from Africa. Baldwin finds documents that seem to prove the ship originated in Africa and not in Cuba, which would show that the Africans were not born on plantations (thus, legally considered Spanish slaves whose ship had strayed into American waters), but rather that they had been captured in Africa and were the fruits of the illegal international slave trade. By the time the first trial nears its conclusion, the Amistad has gained national and international prominence : when first shown, Martin Van Buren is campaigning for reelection from the back of a railroad car, dismissing the Amistad Affair, but now he will get the first trial judge to recuse himself so that Van Buren can handpick his successor. He chooses a...