The movie Morgan Freeman called “of great importance to Americans”
A powerful historical drama starring a cacophony of big names hailing from the industry’s most famous director carries all the potential in the world to become a major talking point and awards season contender, but that wasn’t the case with a movie Morgan Freeman deemed of the utmost importance.
Following a four-year sabbatical from acting after a career-defining 1993 that saw Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List released within months of each other, Steven Spielberg tried to recapture that lightning in a bottle by helming dinosaur sequel The Lost World and true-life period piece Amistad back-to-back.
The end result was one of the biggest commercial disappointments of the filmmaker’s career in the latter, which still holds the unwanted distinction of being the lowest-grossing feature in his filmography since Jaws first rocketed him to prominence in 1975, and his stars were equally dismayed by its failure.
While Amistad did earn four Academy Award nominations in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’, ‘Best Cinematography’, ‘Best Original Score’, and ‘Best Costume Design’ categories, it was shut out of all the major prizes and lamented by both Spielberg and Freeman as an important film that nowhere near enough people showed a vested interest in catching on the big screen.
Speaking to the Golden Globes, Freeman expanded on why Amistad was something that needed to be seen by as many viewers as possible. “I feel that this story has great importance to us as Americans, on its own merits. It’s a moment in history that has largely been buried in time and is very enlightening to us on a lot of levels,” he said. “So, I have a great amount of self-satisfaction in being part of this project, and probably more so as a Black American.”
Inspired by real events, Amistad follows the titular ship as it sails from Cuba to America, with Djimon Honsou’s slave leading an uprising. Upon their arrival, they’re placed into custody and held prisoner, with Freeman’s freed slave Theodore Joadson recruiting Matthew McConaughey’s lawyer to fight their corner and have them exonerated for their perceived crimes, with Anthony Hopkins’ John Quincy Adams becoming a backer.
Although Freeman didn’t think Amistad was a “movie about the history of slavery”, he still thought its thematic and historical insights resonated through to the modern day. “It merely deals with one issue in the era of slavery as a prism, but it does shed light on a very important moment in American history concerning the issue of slavery,” he continued. “It was quite a daring thing that happened, quite challenging for the courts if they were going to consider anything other than the law.”
Unfortunately, Amistad went largely under the radar during its theatrical run in 1997, despite Freeman’s pointed assessment of its dramatic, artistic, and societal merits.
