movie opinion

Rating: Null/10 (12 January 2008)

Amistad is a film about slave trade on the middle passage, it's about these slaves which are caught on the Ivory Coast in Africa and are taken to America on a boat. These slaves are being taken to America in very bad conditions, they are beaten if they are ill or misbehave. The slaves make a rebellion on the ship, and take over the ship, leaving two Spanish ship mates which they will take them back to Africa. At last they end up in America where a judgment takes place, deciding whether the slaves are freed or not. This movie will be out on your cinema on the 4th of December of 1997.The movie was written by Alexs Pate and directed by Steven Spielberg.
The behavior of the actors is quite realistic, but in some parts they don't show so much realism because they act as if they know things they're not supposed to know, for example, when Cinque 'wants free' when he's in parliament.
Spielberg seems to avoid exaggeration; because the movie is quite attractive, we can see no reason why things couldn't have gone this way, but if Spielberg would have exaggerated, this film wouldn't make so much effect on you because you would notice that he's exaggerating and that it's all a fake Hollywood.
The setting, and costumes were very realistic, the scenery had nothing that could make someone think it was filmed in the 1990s because it's all so realistic.
Hollywood has made a very good film, Amistad, but the problem is that it only tells the story from the point of view from one person; this only gives us one point of view. The film would've been better if there were more points of view so that we don't only get the point of view from one person, but we get the point of view from more people, so that we know not only what one person thinks but what the majority think.
I think Hollywood didn't exaggerate the violence, I think slaves were actually treated the way they were on the middle passage, but the reason why is because Hollywood didn't exaggerate hardly anything, if there were too much violence and deaths, I wouldn't believe it.
Spielberg obviously couldn't make a movie three or four months long, so he has to cut scenes out so people don't get bored. But Spielberg could have put more detail into the film because he wastes a too much time on parliament scenes instead; he could have put more detail on the middle passage. It seems as if he Spielberg has invented a few parts to make the movie longer, but it is nearly impossible that Spielberg tells the entire truth, not because he doesn't want, but because he can't tell exactly what was going on because there is no source (as far as I'm concerned) that explained with full details, describing what happened with the slaves on the Amistad.
There is no reason why not to invent some new characters in the film, because it doesn't affect the story line to introduce invented characters unless they don't fit in, but the characters fit in.
Spielberg is American, so we can't really say that he tells the whole truth because if he exaggerates he would leave America in a bad way because people would think America was taking a big role in the slave trade.
Spielberg has obviously researched a lot to get so much information about the Amistad. I think he got the information (if it was him who got it) of the internet or historians which I think give more information than anything or books, which show sources of information which you could otherwise maybe not get. I think that he set the scenery quite well, because the houses and the clothes looked very realistic.
The locations where the film takes place are very well chosen because; they are very adequate to the film. The civil war at the end shows why the war took place, and how much banning the slave trade affected America.
The court was very realistic, and the way everything worked and how they set it up was good. But when Cinque shouts out 'we want free!' things start to get a little fake because he is African and what does he know about English?
On the middle passage, the slaves were treated extremely badly, they only gave food to the slaves who were healthy, and they whip them, and throw them over board and treat them as if they were bugs. The way they treat them could be a bit of an exaggeration, but we don't know what happened so there is no way we can know if how they treated them on the boat is true or an exaggeration.
The movie shows sadness in a very hard way because if you think about how hard it needs to be, to be kidnapped from your village to be sold and having to work without being paid, especially if you're a child, a mother or a father, leaving your family behind or being born into slave trade, like the baby on the boat. And what if they kidnap the whole of your family but when you get to America, you are all split.
The happiness of the African people when they are finally freed, makes you happy in the way that you feel well because the people which have been suffering so much, are finally in what they had always been, freedom, even though it's only a film.
The reaction of the white people when the slaves were freed was happiness, because slaves with human rights had been freed and finally taken back to their homes.