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Amazon.com Essential Video
Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitized history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut- and-dry genre piece. Characters are easy Hollywood stereotypes--"villains" like the Spanish sailors or zealous abolitionists are drawn one-dimensionally and sneered upon. And Spielberg can't suppress his gifted eye, undercutting normally ugly sequences, such as the terrifying slave passage, which is shot as a gorgeous, well-lit composition. At its core, Amistad is a traditional courtroom drama, centered by a tired, clichéd narrative: a struggling, idealistic young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) fighting the crooked political system and saving helpless victims. Worse yet, Spielberg actually takes the underlying premise of his childhood fantasy, E.T. and repackages it for slavery. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the West African rebellion, is presented much like the adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and trying to find his way home. McConaughey is a grown-up Elliot who tries communicating complicated ideas such as geography by drawing pictures in the sand or language by having Cinque mimic his facial expressions. Such stuff was effective for a sci-fi fantasy about the communication barriers between a boy and a lost alien; here, it seems like a naive view of real, complex history. --Dave McCoy
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Melodramatic courtroom drama disguised as slave history,
By DReese (Virginia Beach, VA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Amistad (Widescreen) (DVD)
This movie could be really good if it focused on the Middle Passage. The brief segement on the slave ship was by far the best sequence in the film. But the rest of the movie is dull, sappy, and overblown.Also, its not very historically accurate. This is not a problem dramatically ("Nixon" for example:great drama, horrible history), but its a personal pet peeve of mine. Also, as a history teacher, I find it disturbing that teachers were encouraged to use the film for educational purposes when it was released.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must See,
By
This review is from: Amistad (Widescreen) (DVD)
Amistad is a true story about an 1839 mutiny aboard a slave ship that is traveling towards North America. It is a story in the period when new slaves were illegal, but trading in slaves that were already slaves, was allowed. With a powerful all-star cast including Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew McConaughey, it is a story that will grip your heart and move your spirit. Much of the story takes place in a courtroom drama about the free-man who led the revolt, and deals with questions of freedom, humanity and dignity.The movie, though slow moving, is intense, and the drama builds as many groups claim the slaves as their property. This story is truly gripping and a story of extreme importance in understanding our own history. This lesser-known Spielberg film is truly a must see.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Great Piece of Revisionist Propaganda,
By A Customer
This review is from: Amistad (Widescreen) (DVD)
Another Spilbergian piece of Hollywood propaganda about how slavery was bad and it was all Whitey's fault. Funny that Spielberg chooses to omit the African character's lucrative enterprise in the slave trade when he returns to his homeland. Maybe he should make more movies about the countless Africans who enslaved other Africans to explain how they eventually came to America: after all as Caine said, "Am I not my brother's keeper?" So much for the "brother" myth.The movie is filled with false historical characters and gives the impression that the civil rights movement well underway as early as in the 1840s: baloney! Even in the 1860s, abolitionism was nothing but propaganda to lure ignorant zealots as canon fodder to the front lines of the Civil War; the cause of the conflict being a lot more disturbing: carpetbagging industrialists looking for low paying factory slaves to the north and snug plantation dixiecrats wanting to keep their slaves south of the Mason-Dixie line. Perhaps Spielberg should make a movie explaining why the KKK was formed in Connecticut. Maybe someone will have the guts to do a movie about these truths without the thin sugar coating ready to be licked by ignorant masses drooling for lies. Until then, I'll have to continue turning my head in disgust at this Hollywood drivel.
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