H-LAW FILM REVIEW: Hadden on AMISTAD (x h-law)

H-LAW FILM REVIEW: Hadden on AMISTAD (x h-law)
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 12:30:33 -0600


H-NET FILM REVIEW
Published by H-Law@msu.edu (January, 1998)
AMISTAD by Stephen Spielberg.
(running time: 152 minutes; rated R).
Principal actors: Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, Djimon Hounsou,
Sir Anthony Hopkins. Occasional subtitles, graphic violence.

Reviewed by Sally Hadden < shadden@mailer.fsu.edu >, History Department
and Law School, Florida State University

This is a review in two parts. The first part of this review covers the
film's content and offers some evaluation of its utility for the
classroom and its portrayal of legal events in the Amistad case. The
second part is about how the film AMISTAD has been marketed as history,
and it addresses the use and abuse of historical material for
filmmaking purposes.

Part One: Film Content and Accuracy

AMISTAD begins with the event that made that ship's history different
from other slave ships: the gradual extraction of a nail from the ship
which allowed Cinque (also known as Sengbe) to free first himself and
then the other slaves on board. The first ten minutes are designed to
evoke stark terror, as the freed slaves attack their Spanish captors,
killing all but two of the ship's sailors, who they keep alive in order
to sail back to Africa. The sailors' trick of sailing east by day and
northwest by night eventually brings the AMISTAD to the coast of New
York; there it is boarded by American sailors and taken to Connecticut,
where Cinque and his band are jailed. Lewis Tappan and a fictional
character, Theodore Joadson (an African-American abolitionist) join
forces to promote the cause of the AMISTAD captives; they are aided by
Roger Baldwin, portrayed as an ambulance-chasing money-grubbing
attorney who tries property cases and who sees the slaves, at least
initially, as simply a different form of property dispute. In the
beginning Tappan and Joadson are not eager to have Baldwin's
assistance, but they accept his legal efforts in the end, and he proves
persuasive enough to win the first two trials. Through the course of
those two trials Baldwin's attitudes change toward Cinque and the
Africans, and by the picture's end he has become a committed abolitionist.


The initial trial is before a Connecticut judge and jury with claims
presented by the Spanish slavers (rightful owners of Cuban-born slaves
with a bill of sale), the American sailors (salvage on the high seas),
and the US government (honoring their 1795 treaty obligations to return
the ship and slaves to the Spanish government); lurking in the
background is a Spanish diplomat who intends to see the slaves returned
to Cuba to be executed for murder. Initial efforts to speak with Cinque
and the other AMISTAD survivors fail, as a blundering linguist cannot
help the lawyers understand what the Africans are saying. Without
direct testimony from the slaves themselves to help their case, Baldwin
and Joadson search the AMISTAD looking for physical evidence to show
that the ship came from Africa. Baldwin finds documents that seem to
prove the ship originated in Africa and not in Cuba, which would show
that the Africans were not born on plantations (thus, legally
considered Spanish slaves whose ship had strayed into American waters),
but rather that they had been captured in Africa and were the fruits of
the illegal international slave trade. By the time the first trial
nears its conclusion, the AMISTAD has gained national and international
prominence: when first shown, Martin Van Buren is campaigning for
reelection from the back of a railroad car, dismissing the AMISTAD
Affair, but now he will get the first trial judge to recuse himself so
that Van Buren can handpick his successor. He chooses a young judge
named Coughlin, whose ambition and political sentiments are so great
that theoretically he should be easy to influence regarding the case's
outcome (allowing the national government to return the AMISTAD
captives to Spain with expedition, defusing any international or
north-south tension). The abolitionists sense that in this second
trial, the deck has been stacked against them and they appeal to
ex-President John Quincy Adams for assistance, but he turns them down.
Isabella II writes numerous letters to the United States protesting
that the slaves must be returned, and John C. Calhoun is threatening
that civil war may be the outcome if the case is not resolved in a
pro-slavery fashion.


During the second trial, Baldwin and Joadson learn how to count in the
Mende language, and they find a British/Mende sailor who speaks both
English and Mende and who is willing to serve as a translator for
Cinque and the other AMISTAD slaves. Through this interpreter (and
flashbacks), Cinque is able to describe how he was taken captive near
his village, taken to the slave fortress Lomboko in Sierre Leone and
then put on a slave ship and taken to Cuba. He describes the systematic
brutalization of the slaves, including the casual murder of 50 slaves
who were tossed overboard when the Spaniards discovered they would not
have enough food to keep all their captives alive for the entire
Atlantic journey. The prosecutor openly doubts Cinque's claims, and
gets him to admit that the Mende also keep slaves and that slavery has
been known in Africa for generations. However, through Cinque's
testimony, Baldwin, the judge and others come to sense the horrors that
the slaves have encountered, and despite his political ambitions,
Coughlin the judge rules that the AMISTAD survivors should be given
their freedom and returned to Africa, while the slavers should be
jailed for murder. Apparently Cinque and the Africans will get their
freedom, but the government (at the behest of Van Buren) appeals the
case to the Supreme Court. After almost two hours in the film, Baldwin
and Joadson are appealing to John Quincy Adams for help again, but this
time he decides to assist them. Communicating through his interpreter,
Cinque sends a series of legal questions about jurisdiction and
international treaties to Baldwin and Adams, provoking Adams to angrily
request that Cinque by brought to meet him; the two men form a bond,
and Cinque accompanies Adams and Baldwin to the Supreme Court trial. In
Washington, only one side of the case is presented: that of the AMISTAD
captives. Baldwin looks on as Adams speaks to the court about heroism
and the independence of the judicial branch. Adams presents the case as
one of Cinque's heroism in the face of disastrous odds. Pointing to
Cinque, Adams claims that "[h]e is the only true hero in this room...If
he were white, he wouldn't be standing [here] fighting for his life. If
he were white...songs would be written about him;...his story would be
told and retold in our classrooms; our children...would know his name
as well as they know Patrick Henry's!" He also speaks about how the
independence of the judiciary is threatened if the court caves in to
political pressure brought by Van Buren, and indirectly by the queen of
Spain. Have some backbone, even if it means civil war, Adams implies,
and prove that our courts are truly independent from outside influence.
Two sentences from the case's opinion are read by a justice (never
identified as Joseph Story until the credits, and portrayed by Justice
Blackmun) indicating that the AMISTAD survivors are to receive their
freedom. After Cinque has his farewells with each of the film's
principal characters (Adams, Joadson, Baldwin), he is next shown on a
boat destined for Africa. The film closes by showing each of the main
characters and subtitles indicate their fate (e.g., Van Buren is
replaced by William Henry Harrison; Cinque returns to find his family
missing, village empty and country in civil war).


For those interested solely in the film's portrayal of legal events, it
is barely average. At well over 2 hours, it is too long to show in a
50-minute college classroom. The film would not be well-suited for use
in a legal history class, simply because it contains too much
inaccurate or misleading information about the trials themselves (as to
its use as a supplementary film, in conjunction with Howard Jones'
MUTINY ON THE AMISTAD, that would present a variety of difficulties
which the individual instructor would have to prepare for). My
historical references here are drawn from Jones' book. There are three
key misrepresentations of individuals: Baldwin was an abolitionist when
the case began, and could hardly be considered a man who would only see
the property implications of a human rights struggle for freedom. His
character's "development" on film (from insensitive ambulance-chaser to
abolitionist) falsifies his early commitment to the anti-slavery
movement (see Jones, p.35, 37). The linguist of the film was not a
bumbling idiot, but Josiah Gibbs, one of the foremost students of
language, and it was he, not the fictional Joadson or Baldwin, who
scoured the eastern ports looking for a sailor who spoke Mende before
the conclusion of the second trial. Gibbs' role was turned to humorous
advantage in the film to create some comic relief because (most likely)
the moviemakers did not think audiences capable of remembering several
complicated relationships, or did not want to introduce another white
man sympathetic to the cause of the AMISTAD captives other than Tappan,
Baldwin and Adams. The third individual who life is seriously
misrepresented on film is the district court judge. In real life, his
name was Andrew Judson, and he was opposed to abolitionists before the
trial began; his racial antipathies were strong (p.96-7) and yet he
overcame them in rendering his verdict (which would create confusion in
the minds of the audience, as would the similarity of his name to that
of the fictional character Joadson who Spielberg chose to insert in the
film).


There are minor problems with characterization: Jones has been able to
show that Cinque lied to his captors in America, although why he lied
remains a mystery (p.44). Certainly Cinque realized that telling
partial truths and falsehoods might help him return to Africa, but the
film never suggests he is anything other than honorable and heroic.
There is no evidence to suggest that Cinque assisted in the creation of
the legal defenses mounted by Baldwin or Adams, as the film suggests.
District attorney Holabird changed legal tactics in the middle of the
trial to claim that he recognized that the AMISTAD captives were indeed
Africans (p.76), a political tactic designed to let the White House
retain control of the Africans if they were granted their freedom. John
Quincy Adams was already assisting the defense team as early as the
district court trial, sending them questions and raising issues about
the AMISTAD survivors (p.82-3).

There are several important factual misrepresentations: the American
crew who boarded the AMISTAD most likely steered the vessel toward
Connecticut and not New York because slavery was still legal there in
1839 (Jones, p.28-9). It would complicate the film's storyline too much
to explain that slavery still existed in the American north after the
American Revolution, and so this fact is simply omitted from the film.
But its omission falsely heightens the anxiety the audience is supposed
to feel every time a southerner like Calhoun mentions the words "civil
war" (which he would not likely do, but rather he might refer to
disunion or secession). The AMISTAD was brought into port in August,
hardly the time for snow to be blowing, as it does in the film. The
crucial treaty governing the case was not only the one from 1795, which
might require the slaves to be returned to Spain, but also the 1817
Anglo-Spanish treaty which outlawed the purchase of Africans in Africa
for enslavement and the 1819 American-Spanish treaty which confirmed
the 1795 Pinckney treaty (p.50-1). The first hearing took place aboard
ship, where district court Judson bound over the AMISTAD captives for
trail, and placed them in a New Haven jail. The next hearing took place
before two judges (Judson and Associate Justice Smith Thompson of the
Supreme Court; p.63) in a United States Circuit Court; in that trial
Thompson denied a motion to grant a writ of habeas corpus, and directed
the lower district court, under Judson, to resolve the issue. These
first two hearings were omitted from the film, which proceeded directly
to Judson's district court trial. Judson chose to move the trial from
Hartford to New Haven in 1840, a place where people were more likely to
be sympathetic to the AMISTAD Africans; the change of venue was simply
dropped from the film, as were any subtitles to indicate where events
in America occurred.


The replacement of a local judge with the imaginary judge "Coughlin"
for Van Buren's political gain is pure fantasy on the part of the film,
and given Judson's original distaste for abolitionists, it is hard to
imagine why Spielberg invented Coughlin: Judson seems an even more
unsympathetic character whose change of heart could be considered
almost miraculous. The only purpose I could determine for substituting
a crypto-Catholic judge in the movie seemed to be that it allowed
gratuitous shots of a Catholic church and a further inquiry into the
religious hypocrisy of any human professing Christianity while forcing
men to remain in bondage, which was a pure plot device in the middle of
the movie. Omissions or distortions elsewhere in the film are similarly
troubling. Secretary of State Forsyth made arrangements for the AMISTAD
slaves, no matter whether the district court trial found them to be
either African or Cuban in origin, to be placed on the U.S. navy vessel
GRAMPUS and returned to Cuba when the trial concluded (p.113).
Certainly this is the most outrageous aspect of the case's history
omitted from the film, for the President, Secretary of State, and
district attorney agreed in early 1840 to a strategy that would subvert
the entire course of justice, and violate the separation of powers,
simply to be rid of a political bombshell before the 1840 election;
their actions were paralleled by an escape plan prepared by some
abolitionists, who were willing to violate the law in order to free the
AMISTAD victims and send them to safety on the underground railroad
(p.166).

The second greatest legal inaccuracy in the film is how it depicts the
influence of Cinque's testimony on the judge. Judson had already
decided that Cinque and the other captives were African BEFORE Cinque
took the stand to give testimony, and he announced this determination
in court. Judson was not swayed by Cinque's words, but rather by the
previous testimony of British observers, the two men who served as
translators, and arguments made in the earlier hearings (p.122).
Additionally, in his district court decision, Judson granted that
Cinque and the Africans were free, but he also required that they be
returned to Africa by the government; they were not given their
complete freedom, as the film implies after the district court trial.
The appeal from Judson's ruling, when it arrived at the Supreme Court,
was heard by five Southern justices (not seven, as claimed by the
movie's voiceover, p.171) in 1841, nearly two years and three
presidents (Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler) after the case had
originally begun. When the Supreme Court heard Adams' appeals, only
seven of the nine justices were present during oral argument (not nine,
as the film portrays). Connecticut district attorney Holabird was
replaced by Attorney General Henry Gilpin, whose arguments for the
government and Spain are completely omitted from the film. In Adams'
summation, he described the pattern of executive interference with the
AMISTAD court case and he also revealed to the court Van Buren's
shocking 1840 plot to send the Africans to Cuba, regardless of the
lower court's decision, another element missing from the film which may
have influenced the Supreme Court's decision (p.178). Cinque was not in
Washington for the Supreme Court arguments, but stayed in Connecticut;
for the justices, Cinque and the other Africans remained an
abstraction. After the court's decision, it took another eight months
for the AMISTAD Africans to return to their homeland. These criticisms
do not touch upon the creation of dialogue for historical figures (like
Cinque or Tappan) to speak, nor does it address the insertion of a
major figure, the mythical Theodore Joadson, into the center of the
AMISTAD controversy. The fabrication of new material most likely would
be dismissed by Hollywood as "literary license," although one might
argue that Joadson is supposed to represent the efforts of
African-Americans who helped end slavery in this country.


Part Two: The Marketing of *Amistad* as History

Several months ago, I began reading about the Amistad case and the
movie being made about it as part of the media blitz planned in the
DreamWorks SKG marketing department. Material related to the movie
showed up at my office (as I'm sure it did for some others on this
discussion list) with activities for students to "encourage critical
thinking about the value of history in light of the long-faded chapter
restored to American history in the film "Amistad." These educational
materials, and I use the term loosely, were ostensibly aiemd at high
school and college-level students, although their qualities made them
more appropriate for junior-high level classes, given that they
focussed on "heroes" and "differences." These educational materials
began virtually every page with the words "AMISTAD is a new film
directed by Steven Spielberg..." Since movie posters were also
enclosed, it would be easier to term these materials promotional
literature, which had been mailed by Lifetime Learning Systems Inc.,
but they were all copyrighted by DreamWorks SKG, the company Spielberg
both owns (with Katz and Geffen) and worked for as director in making
AMISTAD. In addition to the propaganda filling my inbox, I saw pictures
from the film in my local newspaper as long ago as October, and read
interviews done with Speilberg about AMISTAD as long ago as September
in the NEW YORK TIMES (September 7, 1997).


Given that AMISTAD is one of the three initial films to be released by
DreamWorks (along with the less-than-thrilling PEACEMAKER and the new
film MOUSE HUNT) company marketers realized that they needed success
with AMISTAD or the company's first year would have to be considered a
bust. Probably the only reports that the marketing office of DreamWorks
didn't fashion were ones coming from Barbara Chase-Riboud, who claimed
that her book ECHO OF LIONS was the real source for the AMISTAD movie;
her copyright lawsuit made news that the DreamWorks team could not have
wished for. For those who want to learn more about her copyright
challenge, visit the website at Cornell dedicated to both the original
AMISTAD case as well as the new copyright suit
(http://www.law.cornell.edu/amistad/). The DreamWorks marketing
department has been relentless in finding venues for promoting the
movie: there's a website (http://www.amistad-thefilm.com) and there
were even photographs from the film printed in the Harvard Law School
alumni bulletin, touting the role played by Justice Harry Blackmun as
Joseph Story in the film's dramatic conclusion. When I read the
Blackmun piece, I realized that marketers must never sleep.

The latest round of publicity sought by the DreamWorks team coincided
with the film's release on December 12. This publicity has been of the
more traditional form, using the actors involved in the film (like
Matthew McConaughey, who portrays Roger Baldwin, the young attorney who
defended the AMISTAD slaves), with one significant addition: the film's
principal producer Debbie Allen (better known for her work in FAME and
as a choreographer) has also been on the publicity treadmill. Ms. Allen
has gone on a number of talk shows, like OPRAH, and given interviews to
magazines (see last week's issue of JET) claiming that the story of the
AMISTAD is unknown, and Americans should know more about the heroism of
Cinque, leader of the AMISTAD revolt. And it is Ms. Allen who has been
the moving force behind this movie: she optioned the Willliam Owens
book BLACK MUTINY (1953, republished in 1968 and 1997) about Cinque and
the revolt, and she persuaded Spielberg to make a film based upon the
AMISTAD story. Owens' book is listed in the AMISTAD film credits as the
source for the film's main ideas, but it is a book few historians would
rely upon: without footnotes, it could not be considered much of a
scholarly source. Despite Ms. Allen's contention that AMISTAD rescues a
lost episode from the dustbin of history, members of this list already
know that her claim is untrue; the existence of Howard Jones' book
MUTINY ON THE AMISTAD (first published in 1987, newly revised and
reissued to coincide with the film) has been used in legal history
classrooms and is routinely cited by general American history textbooks
as the best scholarly source on the subject. What has happened here is
the same phenomena we have read about with other movies based upon
historicized fiction: the average American has not read or is not
interested in reading history crafted by professional historians, but
will devour works that have some historical gloss to them when
presented as novels. I'm not sure I even buy the argument that the
movie will encourage interested viewers to read more good history: see
the DreamWorks tie-in book for AMISTAD at your local bookseller. We
should remember a seminal truth pointed out by Gore Vidal in a recent
NEW YORKER article (Nov. 10, 1997): "our writers and directors tend to
know as little about the country's history as the audience, so when
they set a story in the past the characters are just like us except
they're in costume." That directors and producers prefer historicized
fiction to true history itself simply makes them the same as the
audience. This might not be so awful (consider the masterpiece GONE
WITH THE WIND) except that in this case, Ms. Allen and Mr. Spielberg
want us to see and teach this film as if it WERE history, inaccuracies,
inventions and all. A question in the middle of the DreamWorks
promotional literature really caught my eye: "What good is learning
history?" Although I'm sure Ms. Allen and Mr. Spielberg intended for
students to describe racism or list positive attributes of Cinque or
Theodore Joadson (the fictional African-American abolitionist portrayed
in the movie by Morgan Freeman) in answer to such a question, I do not
think they themselves have really considered the question at all. To
Ms. Allen and Mr. Spieberg, history is what moviemakers refer to as the
"backstory": what happens before the action on film takes place. This
background is basically unimportant enough that it doesn't deserve time
on the screen, but it exists in the minds of the film characters, and
sometimes becomes relevant to how a story on screen unfolds. If history
is misrepresented on film, in the form of real people who are slandered
(like Baldwin or Gibbs) or false people who are invented (like Coughlin
or Joadson), that is just "literary license."

There is a good deal of history in this film, but also at least an
equal amount of fiction. Readers on this discussion list have seen
Howard Jones' comments supporting the Spielberg film because it tells
essential truths of the AMISTAD story (there was a revolt: the slaves
were led by Cinque; the case was appealed through various US courts to
the Supreme Court; the court ruled in favor of recognizing the slaves'
freedom, and it was the only case of its kind to do so; those who
survived the ordeal returned to Africa). But the truth of history, if
we as historians admit to any agreement on such a weighty topic, is
that we must be honest and inclusive when we describe the past (even
the parts we may not care for), and that history is complicated,
especially when told from many viewpoints. Unfortunately for the film,
this means that some characters who might seem heroic get caught
telling lies, or judges who might be thought racist can have changes of
heart. What Mr. Spielberg has done, as he has done in most of his
excellent films, is engage in storytelling--but we know that
storytelling is not the same as history, although Ms. Allen and Mr.
Spielberg would claim that they have chosen the most significant facts,
and they have complicated the historical viewpoints presented in the
film (most notably through the off-and-on use of subtitles). I agree
with Professor Jones about the film's essential truths and I would like
to see more films tackle historical topics, but I am bothered by the
fact that DreamWorks is marketing this film through packets to
teachers, in magazines or on talkshows as if it were history, the
truth--and it is not. If they presented this work as students in our
classrooms, we would flunk them. What good is learning history? I would
answer that it is to be truthful about the past, in order to better
understand both the past and the present. Allen and Spielberg may have
gotten the second part of that statement correct, but they are nowhere
near the first.

For students or teachers on this list who would like to learn more
about the AMISTAD case, please visit the websites created by the
National Archives


http://www.nara.gov/education/teaching/amistad/home.html

Mystic Seaport museum in Connecticut


http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/main/welcome.html

or the AMISTAD trail of historic sites in Connecticut


http://www.visitconnecticut.com/amistad.htm.

If you would like a copy of the DreamWorks packet described in this
review, please send your request to Lifetime Learning Systems, Inc.,
200 First Stamford Place, PO Box 120023, Stamford CT 06912-0023 or
write me at shadden@mailer.fsu.edu .

Copyright (c) 1997 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the
author and the list. For other permission, please contact
H-Net@h-net.msu.edu .