When local lawyer McCounaghey first meets Hopkins' John Quincy Adams, Adams lectures him that all that lawyers really do is tell stories. For the first time, McCounaghey launches a serious effort to find out, to find translators, and, only then, in the midst of the New Haven trial, in another flickering flashback, does Speilberg show the story of the Middle Passage, the slavers drowning captives with weights, and other captives committing suicide. The courtroom explodes with cheers, and you feel the joy and release of the captives. Yet the Africans are not yet free. Speilberg's Cinque asks Adams.
Allies are crucially important.
Whatever the spectrum of reaction, in the end, millions should at least learn of the existence of an important, hidden and emblematic historical event whose inherent theme is that, given oppressive conditions, it is right to rebel. Whereas Amistad is about rebellion in the face of oppression, Martin Scorsese's Kundun examines pacifism as a response to aggression. In many ways, this is Scorsese's most daring film. He's not just immersed in genre. In Kundun , which follows the story of the Dalai Lama's ascension to the theocratic throne in 1937 until his overthrow by armed Chinese invasion in 1959, Scorsese has set out to make a cinematic film, with a message.