Let us remember what slavery was really about

Rating: 8/10 (26 September 2011)

I am not really much of a fan of Spielburg movies because most of them seem to be light hearted, warm, fuzzy movies where everything turns out right. The stars get together at the end and there is a lot of action, fantasy, and plain escapism. But recently Spielburg seems to have turned away from his pointless special effects extravaganzas such as Jurassic Park and moved on to some more demanding and theme driven movies. Amistad, his latest, is one of those. The theme of this movie is freedom and how one will do anything to get it. Amistad is based on a true story and is about a group of slaves who were illegally abducted from Africa and taken to America to sell. One of the slaves manages to free himself and then the rest of the slaves and they mutiny and take the ship. Unfortunately they have no idea how to sail the ship and return to Africa so they end up drifting north along the American coast until they are picked up off the coast of Conneticuit and detained. The movie then quickly movies to a courtroom drama where the who question of slavery is raised. These group of slaves who were illegally apprehended (for at this time the British had banned slavery and the slaves were taken from a British Protectorate) become the centre of a huge debate between the North and the South were the tension over slavery is quickly building. It seems that the South does not want these slaves released, and there is also pressure from Queen Isabella of Spain but nobody is listening to her. Most of the pressure comes from one senator John C. Calhoun, a Southerner who does not want these slaves free. The whole movie is about freedom and Anthony Quinn delivers an incredibly American freedom speech at the end of the movie which is just typically American. The interesting thing though is that there seems to be some biblical overtones through the movie. A friend of mine was very impressed that the biblical ideas were there, but I am a little more cynical for I think Spielburg actually undermines a lot of this towards the end of the movie where the Negro puts his faith in his ancestors rather than God and things seem to succeed. I think also there is a lot of faith put into the court systems of America and this court system in the end pays off, even though it does cause a lot of problems for the poor Negroes. Freedom is interesting for the preamble to the American Declaration of Independence says that all men are created free. Free from what and free to do what, and are we really free. Are we free to kill; are we free to ignore our government; are we free to ignore God? We are free to do anything we want but we must face the consequences for what we have done. There is also hope in the movie but a lot of the hope is shattered. The Negroes interpret the bible from pictures and there seems to be a lot of hope built up here and we feel that we have come to a conclusion only to see it dashed to pieces. Even right at the end the hope of the Negroes are destroyed when they return home to find it gone. History may have abolished slavery and free millions of blacks, but it had changed the lives and the culture of millions of people and completely destroyed a civilisation. Slavery is wrong, but we are all slaves. We are slaves to the world, slaves to the governments, slaves to our society, and most of all slaves to our own sinful desires. Spielburg does not address this in Amistad. He just says slavery is wrong and we cannot return to this. We are all Americans and we are free so let us rejoice. There is no Christian ideologies in this movie for the freedom does not come from Christ but rather it comes from the American Declaration of Independence. While we continue to believe we are free we are going to walk further away from Christ and further into our own self destruction.