review of Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg directed this film in a very dark and serious style, woith opening scenes depicting a slaveship in the year 1839, the slaveship "La Amistad".

Throughout the better part of this movie we do not understand the language of speech being spoken, but, like the movie "the Passion of the Christ", we are involved with the other senses we posses, the senses of sight and visible/invisible sound.

The main character, Cincul, was used to create a vision of his and other African's kidnappings, torture and responsibility thus leading to his position as the leader of the group of 44 Africans brought to court.

Like other movies, we see a movie like this as part of the U.S. History and wonder whether or not it tells a true story. Steven Spielberg does a wonderful account of making us think that it is a part of our history. We see the use of Presidents throughout the latter half of the movie and understand the civil discourse of the period in time. We know slavery caused a civil war, but do we, as non-historians, understand what events sparked its inception? Its answer could easily be told in this day by referring to the art of "googling" the internet. For argument's sake, let us not rely upon the internet to open our minds to the fictionality or non-fictionality of the movie "Amistad".

We know after and during watching this film that Steven Spielberg's use of all the elements of film-making such as subject matter, casting, setting and set design and narrative structure all pull together to create a masterpiece. With such a grave topic as slavery, I didn't find it hard to believe that this was director by Mr. Spielberg. As I am not an expert in our social makeup within the U.S. I cannot say how many African Americans must have been triumphantly touched by his depiction of the treatment of slaves. He addessed such ideas with the Lawyer's(Mathew Mconehey)argument asking, "...are they merchandise, like cattle or other livestock..or were they born slaves? This is not an argument about who they belong to, it's an argument about where they were born."
The courage to address the issue brought ultimate faith in, not our justice system, but in the character of humanity. The seriousness of this movie stirred an emotion in whomever were lucky enough to watch it. At some point in our lives we are all faced with issues or choices where we look up and say with same meaning as Cincul stated with his first words of English, "Give us, us Free, Give us, us Free".