Amistad, a movie by Steven Spielberg.

This movie has a very compelling moment in the middle, showing the horrors of a slave ship, and a powerful interpretation by Djimon Hounsou (Cinque), and to me that makes the movie worthy of a view; however the way history is portrayed and, in fact, just the choice of that particular episode of the American history may move the spectator to the wrong conclusions about the end of slavery in the United States.

Some simple anachronisms are easy to spot: Van Buren campaigning (presidential candidate didn’t campaign until 1860), the crew of the Portuguese ship speaking in Spanish, and some characters speaking of the Secession War as if it were a fact, twenty years before it happened. They bothered me a little, but don’t really matter.

It would have been better though to give the captives more focus, or at least subtitle their dialogue (only a small part is subtitled). The main characters are actually John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) and the lawyer Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), not the captives, of whom we only know Quince.

A fictional abolitionist is thrown there, played by the always excellent Morgan Freeman, who has nothing to do here, though. His role could be completely deleted; probably someone thought the movie needed to be more balanced or something. There is a scene between him and the white abolitionist, the ending of their friendship after the white abolitionist speaks about how the captives are more valuable to their cause dead is very powerful, until you realise they have been friends for years, so they would have talked about martyrdom before, in fact it was rather an acceptable view among white abolitionists, who were the majority, so I don’t see how all that rant about martyrdom could have been new to Freeman’s character.

I think the real problem here is that the Amistad case was not as historically important as it is presented in the movie, when in fact it was considered a case about property and the Atlantic slave trade, thus nothing to do with slavery at home.

I think Spielberg didn’t choose this event because it was significant in the history of slavery, but because he’s so fond of happy endings. The only bitter note of the movie’s ending is a short recognition of Cinque never finding his family, and among all the victory of the ending (including the destruction of the slave fort by the British, which actually happened five years later). I mean, Spielberg did a movie about the Holocaust, and somehow, he chose an episode that ended well! That can be partly the reason of his success, as the public prefer happy endings, but I think a movie shouldn’t need a happy ending, it should make you go home with something to think about, something to resolve by yourself, instead of an episode where everything is resolved.