Amistad Titanic

...Who knows, even if I never make it back to Spain, some day I may be invited to another Seder...

...The first twenty minutes of Amistad are sheer magic...

...The first twenty minutes is all adventure and physical excitement--the very aspect of history that a child revels i n - - while the rest of the movie is concerned with trials, treaties, evidence, oratory, political conniving, crises of conscience, the letter and spirit of the law...

...For me, listening to jazz became a revelation...

...What have I gained by such self-discovery...

...I fell in love with the sound of the tenor saxophone---with the reverberations of Coleman Hawkins, the Spartan purity of Lester Young...

...And the following scenes of the attempt to get the Amistad back to Africa (with two hostage Spanish slavers covertly deflecting it toward North America) are eerily beautiful, especially the nocturnal moment when the slave ship, lights doused to conceal its identity, crosses paths with a European vessel, aboard which wellcoifed, wealthy passengers are enjoying a string quartet on deck...

...The sheer foreignness of this world into which he has been hurled torments him...

...Responding to a favorable verdict i::: ::!: ii i :i TM ~ ~ ~ : ~ ~ ~ F i i i ~ ~ ~i !~ ii i~ ~ ' Commonweal | 8 Februa...

...And all the prosecution could do was to keep insisting that the provenance of the defendants' capture was unknown, that they were strictly property and should be returned to their Spanish owners...

...But once the Africans are captured by American sailors and brought to Connecticut for the first of three trials, the movie never again attains that level of sustained wonderment...

...Yet, if the Amistad we've got is relatively simple (except for the director's technical virtuosity), even naive, parts of it are as unforgettable as the best illustrations (by N.C.Wyeth, say, or Leonard Everett Fisher) in a child's classic...

...Well, for one thing, it has made me secure enough in my own identity to explore other people's worlds...

...Well, of course he does...

...Seeing a freed black drive a buggy through the streets of New London, the prisoners feel they are looking at a chief in his royal chariot...

...But it seems to me that what is great in the new movie (and some of it is great) resembles the sort of daydream a bright child might have right after an exciting hist o r y l e s s o n . What S p i e l b e r g has wrought is much simpler than what a sophisticated director like Bruce Beresford might produce...

...Spielberg's achievement (aided by the bluegray chill of Janusz Kaminski's phoCommonweal | 7 February 13, 1998 tography) is to make us understand how crushing our civilization can be to a victim of it...

...In a tableau worthy of G6ricault, a little piece of Europe and a little piece of Africa silently regard each other in starlight on the Atlantic Ocean...

...The staging of the ensuing battle is everything it should be: exciting, sufficiently bloody, both exhilarating and foreboding...

...I marveled at the dexterity of the alto saxophonists Charlie Parker and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley and of the trumpeter Clifford Brown...

...And certainly in Beresford's hands a multifaceted figure like Henry Clay wouldn't have been presented as the straightforward villain that Spielberg gives us...

...And this time, ironically--after having searched for evidence of a unified tradition--I found that I was hearing each tune not as a collective sound but as the work of individual people...

...It doesn't have the moral complexity and layered characterizations of Beresford's Breaker Morant or the sense that the past is truly another country that made Black Robe and King David so excitingly strange...

...Once I finally understood this, I listened to jazz with new ears...

...13, 1998...

...Later, his gaze wandering over the courtroom and taking in several objects at random--a naval officer's epaulet, a cane resting on a gentlemanly knee--Cinqu6 feels a revulsion verging on nausea...

...Richard Alleva SHIPS IN THE NIGHT "Amistad" & 'Titanic' ~ ell in advance of Amistad's release, the mills of publicity let us know that this film would confirm the new maturity Steven Spielberg had displayed in Schindler's List...

...the breath and earth of Ben Webster, the elegant buzz of Dexter Gordon...

...Although Spielberg and his scriptwriters (David Franzoni and the uncredited Steven Zaillian) show us clearly why the government of Martin Van Buren kept prosecuting - - the president was bowing to the pressure of the slave-owning states-- neither the court proceedings nor the behindthe-scenes politicking achieve any high dramatic interest...

...The very first shot, a shadowy closeup of the revolt's leader, Cinqu6 (embodied by the immensely imposing Djimon Hounsou), as he strains to pick the lock of his chains, gives us an unforgettable picture of fettered strength, a sort of black Samson Agonistes, that both encapsulates the horror of slavery and alerts us to the fury about to explode...

...Of course, the deus ex machina waiting to descend at the climactic third trial is John Quincy Adams...

...Jazz, simply put, was black resourcefulness set to music: both the product of and a metaphor for the black American experience...

...Trying to understand the white man's religion, Cinqu6 and a friend study the illustrations in a New Testament, perceive the horror and power of Christ's Crucifixion, and are then alarmed, as they are herded to court, to see how masts in the harbor resemble huge crosses...

...almost, dare I say it, a religion...

...The rest of it is mildly interesting professional filmmaking...

...How could it...

...And just in time for Anthony Hopkins (as Adams) to save us from Matthew McConaughey's feeble efforts as the principal defense lawyer (and future governor of Connecticut) Roger Baldwin...

...Aside from the opening, most of the best moments express the bewilderment, horror, and wonder the Africans feel at being transported to a New England that, for them, might as well be the far side of the moon...

...Because of the lack of dramatic progress in the courtroom scenes, the moviemakers must work up artificial suspense by trying to make us wonder if the Great Man will intervene or not...

...So, by fits and starts, Amistad grips and enchants...

...This is the stuff of the adult world, and Spielberg can only transform bits and pieces of this world into the material of his unique internal wonderland...

...The good citizen is awake inside the director but only intermittently feeds the dreaming child-artist...

...Judging strictly by what we are shown (the facts might yield a different impression), all the defense could do at all three sessions was to hammer away at the point that the defendants were captured in the country of Sierra Leone, a protectorate of England where the slave trade was forbidden...

...I have now begun to study the histories of other peoples, while continuing to bone up on my own...

...Only a great image-maker could have created the opening sequence of the revolt of the abducted Africans and their frustrated attempt to sail the slave ship Amistad back to their homeland in Sierra Leone...

...The weakest element is the presentation of the legal developments, or rather lack of developments, in the three trials...