"Amistad" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL December 20, 1997 I went last night to see Steven Spielberg's monumental new film "Amistad" --a fictionalized retelling of the story of an 1839 rebellion by a group of Africans who had been captured and sold into slavery. While I am glad that this story has, at last, reached a large audience, I was disappointed in the film. But I want to be careful to make clear that part of my disappointment stems from a bit of my personal history. In the 1960s--long before this screenplay was even thought of by producer Debbie Allen or writer David Franzoni, long before the novel on which it was based was written--there was another screenplay written about this same material. It was the work of an immensely talented and dedicated actor/writer by the name of Kay Cousins whom I was privileged to know and to study with when I was a teenager. She devoted years of her life to researching this story, writing a screenplay, and bringing it to life on the screen. At one point her British producers got so far as to build the ship that would be La Amistad and sign several prominent actors. And then the project foundered. Shortly thereafter Kay Cousins died and her dream of bringing this story to the screen seemed, for thirty years, to have died with her. When I heard that Spielberg was making a film about this subject I had a moment of hope that somehow he had found Kay's screenplay and it was finally going to be a reality. No such luck. These people have probably never even heard of Kay Cousins. What a shame. If they had, it might have been a better film than, in fact, it is. It might have been a film that gave us characters with more depth, more complexity, more emotional truth than the one Spielberg has directed. And the African Cinque would have been the central character, not the white people who worked to free him and his fellow Africans. The story you probably know by now. These Africans, illegally kidnapped from their homeland in West Africa and taken to Cuba and being shipped further on a Cuban slave vessel, La Amistad, for resale. In order to make this legal, it must be claimed that they were born on plantations in Cuba, for at the time no one could legally be forced into slavery, only children of people who were already slaves could be bought and sold. During the voyage on the Amistad Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), who had been a leader--some say a Prince--in his homeland, is able to get free of his shackles and lead the others in killing most of the crew. They spare two Cubans and order them to sail them back to Africa. The Cubans, instead, sail up the East Coast of the U.S., hiding the evidence of their illegal transaction. The ship is captured off the coast of Long Island and the Africans are taken to jail in New Haven, CT. There, the courts have to decide their fate: are they murderers who should be convicted and executed; are they the property of Spain; are they the property of the Cubans (who have a bill of sale); are they the property of the Naval officers who found them and their ship; are they victims of illegal kidnapping and incarceration? These are the complex legal questions that swirl around in the trial, complicated by the politics of North vs. South in the US and the upcoming reelection campaign of Martin van Buren. Rallying around the Africans are Abolitionists who hire a lawyer, Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) to defend them and fight for their freedom. He nearly convinces the jury that they are African and should be freed. President Van Buren removes the judge and replaces him with a Conservative favorable to slavery. Baldwin then finds the hidden evidence and proves conclusively that they were abductees from Africa not born in slavery and the judge rules in their favor. The U.S. appeals the case to the Supreme Court and John Qunicy Adams is persuaded to argue the case before a Court most members of which are slave-owning Southerners. This is a film filled with abstract legal concepts and high minded heroics. While it is fascinating and clearly the ultimate in Hollywood-style filmmaking, sparing no expense, etc., I think these two elements take up so much time and space that a third--and to my mind the most crucial element, the human element--is slighted. With all of Spielberg's cinematic heroics and music welling up to underscore them, with all the time spent articulating the abstractions of law and democracy, with a great deal of time spent, realistically, depicting the clash of cultures, there's no time left for character development. Virtually all of the characters are one dimensional; it's hard verging on impossible to get emotionally involved with the people or their stories, we know so little about any of them. Morgan Freeman's fictional free Black printer is a case in point. We don't really learn anything but the outlines of his story, who he is. It's even more true of Baldwin. Even Cinque, who finally gets to tell his story during the court proceeding, does so so sketchily we don't have a chance to identify with him. I guess it's my long ago acting training with Kay Cousins. I learned the difference between "indicating" and really being emotionally involved in the dramatic moment. That's what's missing here, not from the actors, but from the screenplay and director. The film "indicates" what it wants to say, but never really gets beyond that and the enormous cinematic machine it employs, to get to the real emotional heart of the people of this truly important historical moment. Still, it's worth seeing and you won't be sorry. For the WMNF Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1997 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or reproduce this review without the permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu. Thanks.