Cinema Sunday: Amistad

 

Today's Cinema Sunday post concludes our month long theme of social relevance with a film that recounts a seminal moment in black history. From 1997, we take a look at Amistad. 

Amistad is about the events that took place aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad in 1839 during which Mende tribesmen abducted as slaves managed to gain control of their captors' ship off the coast of Cuba and the international legal battle that followed their capture by an American ship. 

And the protracted legal battles that held the lives of those tribesmen in the balance for two years.   

Amistad is not an easy movie to watch with scenes of the utter depths of the depravity of man towards man as Africans are herded onto an over capacity slave ship, stripped naked, beaten, shoved into dark cargo holds with no ventilation, forced to subsist on watery gruel poured into their desperate hands.  

There's a sequence of outright murder when the slavers seek to reduce their cargo by sending a group of chained Africans into the ocean to drown. 

Cinqué has had enough.

Cinqué is a Mende tribal leader who manages with bloody brutal effort to free himself of his chains and instigate an uprising against the slavers. They leave two of them alive on the condition they sail the boat back to Africa. Instead the two Spanish sailors betray Cinqué and sail La Amistad in the opposite direction into American waters where the Cinqué and his fellow tribesmen are arrested for piracy and mutiny. 

What ensues next is a tangled web of legal claims over the Mende tribesmen. 

The US government insists the Mende are theirs to punish for their crimes of piracy and mutiny.  

Sailors on the US vessel claim the tribesmen as their property by right of salvage.  

The two Spanish sailors claim the tribesmen as their property, a claim supported by the the Spanish government of Queen Isabella, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Spain and the United States. 

Wading into this legal morass are abolitionist Lewis Tappan and his black associate Theodore Joadson, a former slave.  They resolve to help the captives. But the best lawyer they can get who is willing to take on this thankless task is Roger Sherman Baldwin, a young and somewhat eccentric attorney.  

Key to the claims of the American and Spanish sailors to the captives as property is that they are from Cuba, not Africa. Even in a time of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade is banned.  Apparently it's illegal in 1839 to kidnap and transport Africans across the ocean as slaves.

Well, we know they're from Africa but Baldwin doesn't; there is a the pesky matter of a persistent language barrier. 

But Baldwin has his suspicions they are not from Cuba as the claimants insist.  Baldwin and Joadson poke around La Amistad and find documents which prove the captives were kidnapped and transported across the Atlantic aboard a Portuguese slave ship before being transferred to La Amistad in Havana. 

Impressed with this discovery, the judge indicates he is prepared to dismiss the US and Spanish governments' case and release the captives.

To preclude that from happening and to head off that diplomatic crisis with Spain, President Van Buren replaces the judge with a younger man whom he believes will be easier to manipulate to deliver the desired verdict.   

Baldwin and Joadson have facts on their side but they need an edge. They need Cinqué's side of the story.  

Baldwin and Joadson recruit freedman James Covey as a translator, enabling Cinqué to testify directly before the court. He relates the story of the capture of he and his tribe and their hellish experience on the boat.   

The prosecutor looks to poke holes in Cinqué's story, escalating tensions within the courtroom.  It's in this time of stress,  Cinqué abruptly stands and demands, "Give us, us free!". 

The new judge rules as the previous judge was going to, that the Africans are to be released and for additional good measure, the two Spaniards are to be arrested and charged with illegal slave-trading.

Yay! Cinqué and his tribe win and they're going back home as free...

Not so fast, scooter! 

Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, representing the slave-holding interests of the American South, pressures President Van Buren to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. 

Shit! The Mende have to go through this again?!?

Cinqué is pissed! He doesn't understand American politics or its court system! All he knows is Baldwin told them they won, they were free and now they did not win and are not free. Cinqué is not happy with Baldwin. 

Never mind that Baldwin is the only guy in his corner despite being ostracized and receiving countless death threats for daring to represent slaves who murdered white men.  

Baldwin finally gets Cinqué to understand he is on their side and he's no happier with this turn of events but he will keep fighting. 

Although he could use some help. It seems the majority of the Supreme Court justices are from slave holding states so yeah, this could be a problem,  

Baldwin and Joadson manage to appeal to John Quincy Adams to help them to take up the case of the Mende. 

Yep, former President of the United States. THAT John Quincy Adams.   

After meeting with Cinqué, Adams agrees to take up the case before the Supreme Court and his impassioned and eloquent speech convinces the court to confirm the judgement of the lower court and release the Africans.

Which ended slavery and racism forever and... well, no, it didn't. 

In casting the role of Cinqué, director Steven Spielberg had very specific requirements that the actor must have an impressive physical appearance, be able to command authority and be of West African descent. The casting of this role was extremely crucial to the point Spielberg was prepared to delay production for years if needed until the right actor was found. An audition by Djimon Hounsou came to his attention and Spielberg knew he found Cinqué. It was a bit of a gamble as Hounsou was relatively new and unknown. 

But they made right call as every moment Djimon Hounsou is on screen as Cinqué, he is an imposing force of strength and leadership and passion. 

Morgan Freeman was cast on a first-hired basis as Theodore Joadson, one of the film's few fictional characters. Chiwetel Ejiofor  made his film debut in the role of translator James Covey.  

Most of the reviews of Amistad at the time were positive although the general consensus at the time were that Spielberg's earlier work on Schindler's List and The Color Purple were stronger films.  

There was a discussion printed in The Atlantic 2014 that dismissed Amistad as "sanctimonious drivel" for perpetuating the white savior narrative. I've seen this complaint about other films that have dealt with issues of race and while I can't speak to all of them, I'm not sure what anyone expected to happen in Amistad. A group of Africans have been captured as slaves and are caught in the gears of a legal system that was not designed to act in their favor. Yes, some white guy from within the system needed to step up and say to the other white guys within the system "Oh hell no!" 

Was Cinqué supposed to learn perfect English, get a law degree and defend himself before the Supreme Court?  

But even within their cells and their shackles, Cinqué and his tribe still exert their agency as best they can within a system that is arrayed against them. And yes, an old white man wins the day in the court but as John Quincy Adams credits after the case is done, he won it with Cinqué's story. 

Amistad is a bit frustrating in that the excuses and shenanigans employed by the pro-slavery forces are still being used today to justify the transgressions of our past. The prosecutor in the trials seeks to justify American enslavement of Africans on the basis of Africans enslaved each other.  I believe pundits like Tucker Carlson have suggested African Americans should just get over their issues with America's slavery past because Africans did it to themselves.   

Amistad reflects how far we have come and sadly, how far we haven't.   

Next week, Cinema Sunday moves on to a film of less social and political portent as I have seen a movie that came out here in 2023.

Next week: Ant Man & the Wasp - Quantumania!