Spielberg's Amistad speaks kindly of America

Amistad is a very American movie, in that there is something for nearly every American to like in this masterful dramatization of an actual slave revolt aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad in 1839 and the subsequent trials of the would-be slaves in the United States.

Black Americans will be pleased with the movie's depiction of the slaves as noble and innocent victims, and, in one fleeting scene, pious Muslims. White Americans will be relieved to find their ancestors presented by and large as fair-minded and compassionate, with a few understandable exceptions among politicians. Even apologists for the Confederacy should appreciate both the movie's inclusion of a reasonable Southern perspective and its acknowledgment of African complicity in the slave trade and practice of slavery at home.

For Christians in general, there is a moving scene near the natural climax of the movie when one of the slaves discovers the Gospel of Christ through an illustrated Bible. For Roman Catholics in particular, there are nuns and crucifixes and a courageous young judge who crosses himself with holy water and says his mea culpas in church the night before reaching his daring decision to free the slaves. Protestants are represented by a dedicated abolitionist who funds the slaves' legal defense and by an assembly of men and women who meet outside the jailhouse to sing "Amazing Grace."

For less religious Americans, there is a secular coda in which a former President, John Quincy Adams (Sir Anthony Hopkins), takes up the slaves' defense before the U.S. Supreme Court. Standing before a bust of his father, Adams makes a very American plea for living up to the ambitions of our forebears, cribbed, says Adams, from one of the slaves' own poignant pagan invocation of his ancestors. Adams's is a surprisingly conservative soliloquy for a modern film, suggesting (perhaps unwittingly) that there is more to being an American than just the embrace of universal ideals.

There are no real bigots in this film, at least none that is given much of a voice. It is as if the director, Steven Spielberg, had set out to make a movie that would offend no one and instead improve race relations by helping whites feel the evil of slavery and blacks believe in the goodness of America.

There seems to have been an attempt to present some of the historical complexity of the Amistad incident for the sake of fairness. We are shown all sides of the issue without any side cast as the villains, except perhaps the Spanish and the Portuguese, who are blamed for the slave trade.

Anyone that Americans can be expected to hold an affinity for is shown to be principally good, although not entirely so.

Only the English appear entirely good in Amistad. Every other group has a dark side briefly shown: for the African slaves, the Africans who sold them into slavery; for the Catholic judge praying in church, a Portuguese priest at the loading of a slave ship; for the well-meaning abolitionists, an abolitionist willing to sacrifice the lives of the Amistad slaves for the cause of abolition.

History books can accommodate all such images of complex reality, but drama can do so only with difficulty. A movie's attempt at historical faithfulness is necessarily limited by its need to make dramatic sense of its subject. It is in trying to make dramatic sense that Amistad falters.

There is little connection between the movie's surprisingly Christian climax and its secular Enlightenment coda, and not enough in the first half of the film to prepare the viewer for the Christian climax. MiMe film's sudden turns seem intended to cover all ethical bases, so that all Americans might agree that slavery was wrong, but hadn't we already agreed to that?

The result of Spielberg's peacemaking among all Americans is a melange of sentimental scenes and images with no satisfactory way of making sense of them, and thus no way of satisfying anybody. NonChristians will be dismayed by the movie's Christian turn, and Christians should be disappointed that the movie did not end 20 minutes sooner.

The film's final impression is made not by Sir Anthony's pretentious portrayal of the saintly Adams but by John Williams' haunting musical score, the only part of the movie that will please everybody.

Not surprisingly, coming from Spielberg, Amistad is a film of feeling, an emotional experience that all Americans can share, if not in the same way. Unsatisfying intellectually, it might nevertheless make some Americans feel differently about our country and each other. Its confusion of sentiments is no aid to understanding, but then America has come a long way on a confusion of sentiments. Amistad kindly presents them all.

Mr. Mitchell is the author of Women in the Military: Flirting With Disaster, to be released by Regnery Publishing this month.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 16, 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved