Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Nigel Hawthorne, Jeremy Northam, David Paymer, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Anna Paquin, Chiwetel Ejiofor
As Amistad opens circa 1839, Cinque (Hounsou), an African slave being transported on a ship from Havana, leads a rebellion and kills several crew members. The ship then travels into U.S. waters near Connecticut, where Cinque and the other slaves onboard are captured and charged with murder. Due to treaties, the slave trade with Africa is outlawed, but the slave trade from the West Indies is still legal. The ship's owners claim the slaves came from Cuba, which would make Cinque guilty of murder. However, if Cinque can prove he was kidnapped and transported from Africa, the rebellion would be justifiable and the slaves would be found not guilty. It is bizarre to think there would be any scenario in which Cinque could be found guilty, but Amistad takes place in a time in which slavery would not be abolished in the U.S. for another 25 years and the threat of civil war looms.
Steven Spielberg's film is part legal proceedings and a document of the nature of slavery. Cinque is an ordinary Sierra Leone farmer with a family who is kidnapped, transported thousands of miles across the Atlantic, and sold into slavery in Cuba. There are hundreds of other slaves on this journey. Some are thrown overboard due to lack of provisions, while others are whipped, raped, or tortured by their enslavers. Slavery is a lucrative business and covered under property law. When Cinque and the slaves require a lawyer, Roger Baldwin (McConaughey), an attorney specializing in property law, takes their case at the urging of local abolitionists Theodore Joadson (Freeman) and Tappan (Skarsgard). Baldwin gradually grows to understand the slaves as human beings and not mere property while learning their harrowing tale.
The trial soon becomes a political football between President Martin van Buren (Hawthorne), who fights to win a guilty verdict in order to appease the South and bolster his re-election efforts, and the eleven-year-old queen of Spain (Paquin), who argues for Spain's ownership of the slaves. The case rises to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Cinque's appeal is argued passionately by former President John Quincy Adams (Hopkins-in an Oscar nominated performance). The strange part is: Baldwin argues the case successfully, but the case goes to appeal anyway, mostly because the rights of the Africans aren't exactly recognized.
It is difficult not to think of the numerous scenes in Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). in which the Jews are rounded up, executed, or mistreated in concentration camps, when Cinque's horrific story is shown. I never can fathom how any person could so cruelly treat other human beings in such a manner. How do the traders or camp guards sleep at night? What justification could they have for their behavior? With the Jews, it is a matter of harmful scapegoating and evil political ideology run amok. With slaves, it is a matter of the bottom line. In either case, as with any other type of genocide, a group must view another as not human and thus acceptable to be exterminated. It takes a certain mindset or pathology which is foreign to most people, but not nearly enough.
Spielberg's film is one of innate power. The Africans may win the case and be allowed to return to Africa, but what will they find there? Will they even have homes? Or families? They have lost so much already by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are many on the side of right in the case, such as Adams, Baldwin, and Joadson, but will right necessarily triumph over legal? Amistad poses that question carefully. Because Steven Spielberg is such a master storyteller, he can use the power of pure filmmaking to tell this powerful story which is but a footnote in American history. Hopkins' final speech before the Supreme Court is masterful, eloquent, and appeals to practicality and political realism. "If Cinque were a white man who killed his British captors, he would not be able to stand due to the weight of all the medals bestowed upon him," he argues. It is astounding to think 175 years later that such a statement could still hold true.
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