As the ship is crossing from Cuba to the United States, Cinqué, a leader of the Africans, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. The mutineers spare the lives of two Spanish navigators to help them sail the ship back to Africa. Amistad is a 1997 American historical drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors' ship off the coast of Cuba, and the international legal battle that followed their capture by the Washington, a U.S. revenue cutter. Cinque looks over to him, conversing in Mende.] As performers they are put to shame by their English counterparts—Hawthorne, Hopkins, and Pete Postlethwaite (as the government’s attorney)—who at least have some notion of how to impersonate the body language and bearing of a more formal age. Amistad focuses on the aftermath of the revolt of 1839 on a Spanish slave ship called La Amistad. All of them were close-minded in a most profound way, quite certain in their devotion to Christian truth and natural rights. The Amistad in the District of Connecticut. extraordinary . Do you think the Africans on the Amistad should have dealt peacefully Thus, in a typical letter from the Africans to their defenders, Cinqué complained to Baldwin of their treatment at the hands of Colonel Stanton Pendleton, the jailer, calling him a “bad man” who “did not think of God” and whose soul would be “lost . In his late forties at the time, and a man of considerable public standing—he would be elected governor of Connecticut three years later and U.S. Amistadis a 1997 Americanhistorical dramafilm directed bySteven Spielberg, based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave shipLa Amistad, during whichMendetribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors' ship off the coast ofCuba, and the internationallegal battlethat followed their capture by theWashington, a U.S.revenue cutter. Amistad does leave us with one admirable Christian, the courageous Judge Coglin, who is a Catholic. The black members of the cast, most of whom, like Djimon Hounsou, come from West Africa, were coached in Mende, the language of the Amistad captives, and speak it exclusively (but for a half-dozen words) with English subtitles. Mirroring our mendacious system of counting by race, of which it is a faithful expression, it confirms and extends those stereotypes. 11. Second, that he is an empty vessel, leaving Morgan Freeman “seriously underused” (Janet Maslin in the New York Times) in an “underwritten role” (David Ansen in Newsweek). He, however, is a complete fabrication, as is the episode of the Van Buren administration’s outlandish interference in the judicial process that he thwarts. By this means and others, Steven Spielberg’s film will long contribute to making it harder and harder for us to tell the truth, either about our history or about ourselves. Throughout, he bears himself with the brooding self-assurance of a captive African prince. Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York in 1782. . The first Amistad trial concerned the criminal charges of murder, mutiny, and piracy against the Africans of the Amistad. Played by the imposing Djimon Hounsou, a native of Benin, Cinqué is introduced in the film’s harrowing opening scene as we watch him linger in quivering, vindictive fury over the prostrate body of the captain of the Amistad, whom he has just killed. Enter, at last, John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins). Despite refusing to help when the case was initially presented, Adams agrees to assist with the case. What town does the trial begin in? b Havana is the capital of Cuba, which is in the Caribbean Sea. Debbie Allen, a co-producer of the film and the only African-American among its makers, “assumed the role,” according to Newsweek, “of guardian of black culture.” Having sold Spielberg on the project in the first place, she kept the story from “becoming too much about the white people who fought for [the Africans’] freedom in court.”. Joseph Cinqué was, by every account, a man of uncommon dignity and presence. As the trial progresses, Judge Coglin renders a surprising verdict that has significant repercussions, causing a presidential appeal to a Supreme Court led by a majority of Southern slaveholders. But it is inconceivable that he would have done so at his own home, treating Cinqué as an equal (“I’m being very honest with you; anything else would be disrespectful”), calling himself a “chief” and American citizens “villagers” in an exercise of moral equivalence, and modestly accepting instruction in African spirituality. Reviewers have noted two things about this character. I'm beginning to understand it. Among the bien-pensants, only the columnist Frank Rich of the New York Times has registered a serious complaint about Amistad. ... Judge Coglin recognized Holabird who says that is quite a tale of unspeakable suffering and courage, and it is all true. Continuity mistake: When the Amistad is captured by the American naval vessel, and Cinque jumps out of the dinghy to swim for it, the frontal shot of his face with the pursuing boat behind him shows the sun overhead, at midday or morning, towards viewers' left. Invoking its treaty rights, the Spanish crown insists on the return of its citizens’ property. In light of this evidence, the staff of President Van Buren has the judge presiding over the case replaced by Judge Coglin, who is younger and believed to be impressionable and easily influenced. for its power, for its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the record and points of discussion.”) Even on its own terms, Adams’s speech in Amistad fails. Rather, they were instructed right from the start in Christianity and English—by Yale divinity students, no less. What’s the name of first judge to hear the case? 8. The best scholarly treatment of the affair, which I have relied on throughout, is Mutiny on the Amistad by Howard Jones (1987), recently reissued in paperback by Oxford University Press, 271 pp., $12.95. c Connecticut is in the northeast of the USA. Spielberg’s revisionism with respect to Tappan and Baldwin serves a wider purpose: namely, the denigration of Christianity, especially of the white, Protestant variety. The popular critics can perhaps be forgiven for taking the movie’s claims of accuracy at face value. For the hundreds of hours he spent defending the Amistad Africans, he was paid a token fee; it was basically pro-bono work. Such things are to be expected in a dramatization. . The ocean is the Atlantic Ocean. Since the answer to that fundamental question shall so heavily govern every determination of this Court, I … After pressure from Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina on President Van Buren, the case is appealed to the Supreme Court. It is enough for them that Amistad evokes the distant horrors endured by enslaved Africans during the “middle passage.” “[T]hese spare scenes are among the most wrenching ever put on film,” gushed Jonathan Alter in a Newsweek cover story. A great memorable quote from the Amistad movie on Quotes.net - [While in prison awaiting Judge Coglin's ruling, one of the Amistad captives, Yamba, reads an illustrated Bible. . And the lessons took. But it is nothing new to say that Spielberg is a master of visual storytelling or even that he is frequently a banal dramatist. Amistad Epic historical drama which follows a legal battle over a shipload of slaves who overpowered their captors at sea and landed on the shores of America. Feb 17th 2020 at 12:23:03 AM. I will call into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come help me at the judgment. After all, Amistad can point to an impressive list of academic consultants, including the historian John Hope Franklin, head of the President’s race-advisory board, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Harvard. A thoroughly assimilated American—educated, proper, given to patriotic speechifying—he serves as a deferential, desiccated foil to the soulful and defiant Africans. “Who we are is who we were,” Adams intones in Cinqué-influenced words as his gaze alights on marble busts of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the rest. Amistad c Pearson Education Limited 2008 Amistad - Answer keys of 2 Answer keys LEVEL 3 PENGUIN READERS Teacher Support Programme Book key 1 a captain, lawyer b slave c jury d chain, spike e ceiling, lamp 2 a Sierra Leone is in West Africa. Leveraging Racism for a Pandemic-Level Power Grab. . Given such promising material to start with, it is no surprise that Steven Spielberg’s big-screen rendering of these events is a “helluva story.” But is it true? The actual meeting took place in Westville, Connecticut, where the Africans were being held, pending appeal. If Amistad pretends otherwise, it is only because Cinqué, by the movie’s lights, has to be seen to be freeing himself in court just as he did on board the slave schooner. Amistad (1997) Jeremy Northam as Judge Coglin. These men, Adams thought, accused of piracy and murder, were like children with a hornbook. The courts must decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free. Laboriously they spelled through a few verses of the New Testament. Amistad (1997) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Cast: Djimon Hounsou (Sengbe Pieh/Joseph Cinqué), Matthew McConaughey (Roger Sherman Baldwin), Anthony Hopkins (John Quincy Adams), Morgan Freeman (Theodore Joadson), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Ens. But the Amistad Committee makes no appearance in Amistad, and the wider abolitionist movement, when it is visible at all, appears only on the periphery. Christianity is not a positive force in the lives of the captives; to the contrary, when it is not merely a distraction, it is a force for moral weakness. It’s . Senator after that—Baldwin was already well known for his abolitionist sympathies. Judge Coglin was very brave when he sided with the African people because siding with the spainsh would’ve been the easier thing to do but instead he did what he thought was right rather than what others were pressuring him to do. (Given the movie’s casual regard for facts, one does wonder what these eminences could possibly have been consulted about: the costumes?) Atmospherics aside, the film is admittedly more of a mixed bag. James … It is carrying African people as its cargo. But it also grossly falsifies the real experience of the Amistad captives. Is it necessary to point out that “who we were,” in the case of many of the American founding fathers, was slaveholders—or that in Southern opinion, slavery was acceptable precisely because it could be traced (to use Cinqué’s pious words) “far back to the beginning of time”? Lost your password? As for Roger Baldwin, whom Tappan helped hire to represent the Amistad Africans, he was hardly the scruffy, money-grubbing young attorney portrayed by McConaughey. John Quincy Adams did meet Cinqué, as the movie maintains. History Awesome / Amistad. The problem lies in the opposite direction: with the deliberate overlay of African-style ancestor worship. As the plot unfolds, Cinqué emerges in a far different light: a figure of unshakable pride and dignity; a man of keen sensitivity, heartsick for home and modest to a fault about his own exploits; and a shrewd observer of his new surroundings, increasingly involved in the legal defense of the Amistad prisoners. Amistad never departs from a strict one-to-one ratio between black and white lead characters. That, indeed, is why they came to the aid of the Amistad captives in the first place. Joseph Cinqué, a leader of the Africans, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. The answer is obvious: he is necessary to maintain a racial quota. Go To. Cinquè's plea touches many, including the judge and in a court ruling, Judge Coglin (Jeremy Northam) dismisses all claims of ownership. A movie celebrated for its truthfulness fundamentally misrepresents the racial relations at its core. Coglin nevertheless ruled in favor of the plaintiff in the case after Roger Sherman Baldwin presented evidence to Coglin that proved that the African slaves in question were born in Africa, and therefore not property of Spain or any man. Hounsou, too, carries his part off with subtlety, using his expressive face and the unfamiliar cadences of Mende to great effect. Take your favorite fandoms with you and never miss a beat. For the foreseeable future, Amistad is destined to be shown to our children as the featured movie of Black History Month. “These are the two chief conspirators,” Wilcox [the U.S. marshal] said. Coglin was chosen by President Martin Van Buren to replace the previous judge presiding over the case because Coglin seemed to be young and impressionable; the Democratic Party had leverage over him, as they knew that his grandfather was a … You will receive a link to create a new password via email. Amistad (1997 c 155') En: 7 Ed: 8. “We read,” Cinqué said, his manner dignified, his face proud with achievement. La Amistad is a slave ship transporting captured Africans from Spanish Cuba to the United States in 1839. The slaves manage to kill many Spanish sailors and take over the ship with their leader, Cinque. But in thus shifting from the transcendent principles held by these men to their status as ancestral persons, the Adams of Spielberg’s imagining comes weirdly close to embracing the view that he has condemned just moments before. In light of this evidence, the staff of President Van Buren has the judge presiding over the case replaced by Judge Coglin, who is younger and believed to be impressionable and easily influenced. Colonel Pendleton brought a Bible and asked Cinqué and Grabo to read. Yamba: I'm not pretending. . For Janet Maslin of the New York Times, “the stark, agonizing depiction of the captives’ Atlantic crossing” was enough to establish the “irrefutable” worthiness of Amistad. A grateful Cinqué, speaking through a translator, queries Adams: “What did you say? What this meant in practice is best seen in the film’s treatment of the black abolitionist Theodore Joadson. Rosen feels the strong presence of Christianity in the real Amistad events is unforgivably lacking in Spielberg's work. Explore the scintillating March 2021 issue of Commentary. Historica Wiki is a FANDOM Games Community. What words did you use to persuade them?” To which the gruff Adams replies, after a moment’s thought: “Yours.”. He has misrepresented, in a way that can only be intentional, the racial relations that form the very heart of the events he depicts. 7. The facts at issue in Spielberg’s Amistad are not picayune details, quibbles over the compressing or simplifying of what is a very complex tale. Spielberg does a great job in recreating the Amistad revolt that spurred a series of trials beginning in the lower courts of Connecticut and ultimately ending in the Supreme Court. Free educational screenings are sure to follow, as they did with Schindler’s List. Far from meeting as equals, Adams and Cinqué encountered each other across a profound social divide. The Amistad incident placed Van Buren in a precarious situation. Cinque: You don't have to pretend to be interested in that. Impressive, too, and by now much ballyhooed, are the lengths to which Spielberg has gone to ensure that the Africans are portrayed authentically. plcthecd. “La Amistad”, is based on a true story of America’s slave trade. Of course, Cinqué and his luckless companions are not left to fight alone. The film’s starry-eyed, grandiose view of African culture is deeply problematic in itself. Yet Coglin is an invention. one culture wanting to be dominant, and not really acknowledging the contributions of a culture that was far beyond and centuries ahead. But the two lawyers are not on their own. I realized after much trial and error, that in the courtroom, whoever tells the best story wins. The scene has been well imagined in William Owens’s Black Mutiny1 a carefully researched historical novel about the Amistad affair specifically cited by the moviemakers as “a major source of reference material”: The two men left their woodchopping and came to the room. It is, in fact, an extraordinary example of racial preference, giving blacks a prominence and importance they did not have while distorting or denying the role of whites. Far from being indifferent to their fate as individuals, he refused to prolong their suffering by pressing for more litigation. Once before the Supreme Court, Adams leaves behind the legal technicalities that had dominated the earlier proceedings. Leave aside the fact that it fails to do justice to the full obsessive eccentricity of Adams’s actual eight-hour performance, which focused on the Van Buren administration’s kowtowing to the Spanish crown and the South. The problem lies not with his appeal to “the very nature of man” or to the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. Theodore Joadson was an African-American abolitionist printer, businessman, and ex-slave.Along with Lewis Tappan, he sought to free the Africans who were imprisoned during the Amistad trial of 1839, and, with the help of lawyer Roger Sherman Baldwin, they won the case.. In truth, Judge Judson, a Democratic party man and anti-abolitionist, relied on testimony from the famous Irish abolitionist Richard Robert Madden (not mentioned in the movie) to rule on the status of the Africans. " Arrayed against the Amistad Africans and their supporters is the administration of President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne), who finds himself drawn into a most unwelcome diplomatic and political firestorm. They shook hands with Adams and greeted him in forced English. As Debbie Allen told the Los Angeles Times: Whether you’re talking about art, or literature, or music, the real history has just been castrated—left out—and great historians have done it. One need not be a defender of the evangelizing practices of the abolitionists to note the violence done by Spielberg’s treatment, not only to them but to those whose lives they undertook to transform by their ministrations. (In private, Justice Story called the speech an “extraordinary argument . When the shot changes to behind him (chaser's view), the sun is dead in front of him and setting. To the judges installed in this particular corner of the public square, the question of whether Spielberg has been true to the historical record is of no interest. Jeremy Coglin was an American judge who presided over the 1841 court case United States v. The Amistad in the District of Connecticut. Amistad asks to be judged on grounds other than these. Amistad is a 1997 American historical drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors' ship off the coast of Cuba, and the international legal battle that followed their capture by the Washington, a U.S. revenue cutter. The movie, he wrote, is a “diversion” from the difficult racial issues of our day, “brought to us by [President Clinton’s] campaign contributors at DreamWorks”: “The whole country can, after all, agree that slavery is bad—and still come to blows over affirmative action.”, Rich is right about the political affiliations of Amistad‘s makers, but wrong to consider the movie a “diversion” or a “form of escapism.” To the contrary, Amistad is a major artistic offensive in the current debate over race. The courtroom is in hysterics, with Roger Baldwin letting out a monstrous Big "YES!" The monthly magazine of opinion. Having established these two salient points, however, no critic has asked why Spielberg went to the bother of having Theodore Joadson at all. 4 Amistad does leave us with one admirable Christian, the courageous Judge Coglin, who is a Catholic. The only visible Christian in the film is Judge Coglin, a man who does not exist in history. The essential connection between the two men, which the movie elides, was an organization called the Amistad Committee. Amistad was the name of a slave ship that was traveling from Cuba to the U.S 1839. The story of Amistad, Spielberg’s latest foray into what he calls “socially conscious” film-making, shares the improbable qualities of its predecessor. Considering the crew are slave traders, they [[AssholeVictim deserve to die]]. If the white characters in Amistad are made to take their historical lumps, the black ones are allowed to create a history of their own. This meant that Cinqué and the others were hardly accommodated in their native practices. Even their manacles and chains, Spielberg has boasted, are real. As the ship is crossing from Cuba to the U.S, Clinque, who was a tribal leader in Africa, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. It was a meeting of primitive man and the finest product of civilization. 10. Biography. Judge Coglin : Were they born in Africa? What island were the rebel slaves’ captured of the coast of? 9. Consequently, seeking to make the case more personal, on the advice of John Quincy Adams, Baldwin and Joadson find James Covey, a former slave who speaks both Mende and English.