Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad is earning rave reviews. The 10-part Amazon Prime mini-series imagines an alternate history where the abolitionist route for escaped slaves prior to emancipation is an actual, physical subterranean railway.
Incidentally, the fantastical railway trope is the chief feature of Netflix’s sci-fi show Snowpiercer (2020-), whilst the rocket-powered ‘Bullet Train’ is prominent in the last season of Amazon’s alt-history Man in the High Castle (2015-19).
When looking at motion pictures dealing with the subject of slavery in the United States, one must be aware of the seismic shift from its early onscreen depiction in movies such as D. W. Griffith’s 1916 Birth of a Nation (originally titled The Clansman) and the (slightly) more evolved Gone with the Wind (1939).
Antebellum (2020) – Sky Movies, NOW TV
Sky Cinema Originals probably thought they were on to a Get Out-style hit with Antebellum, where a Civil War Louisiana slave plantation is revealed to be not quite what it at first appears.
Unfortunately for writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, the movie is closer to M. Night Shyamalan’s silly The Village (2004) than Jordan Peele’s now classic thriller.
If Antebellum doesn’t sate your appetite for this kind of cinematic Three-card Monte, you may want to keep an eye open for the upcoming Alice, where a slave on what we are told is an 1800s estate in the Deep South discovers that it is actually 1973.
Emperor (2020) – Amazon Rent/Buy
The little seen movie tells the story of Shields ‘Emperor’ Green (Dayo Okeniyi) and escaped slave who teams up with abolitionist firebrand John Brown (James Cromwell) to help lead the notorious 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in West Virginia.
This event led directly to the outbreak of the Civil War two year later.
After initial success, the attempt to secure arms for a prospective slave army was put down in a strange twist of fate by none other than Lt, Col Robert E. Lee (James Le Gros), who of course went on to lead the Confederate forces in the ensuing conflict.
Ethan Hawke played John Brown in the recent Showtime mini-series The Good Lord Bird (2020) with Quentin Plair as Emperor.
Harriet (2019) – Amazon Buy Only
British actress Cynthia Erivo (Widows) plays the leading abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman in this biopicdirected by Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayo).
Reviews of the picture were generally positive and Erivo received excellent notices, but it was felt by some critics to be on the formulaic side.
President Barack Obama’s administration planned to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill (replacing slave owner and Trump hero President Andrew Jackson), this was slow walked for ‘technical’ reasons by Republican Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, but President Joe Biden has since revived the proposal.
The Birth of a Nation (2016) – Amazon Rent/Buy
Issues surrounding earlier rape allegations against director/star/co-writer Nate Parker torpedoed the success of his movie, which took the title of DW Griffiths and skewed the original premise by depicting the 1831 slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia led by Nat Turner (Parker).
As the movie also co-stars Armie Hammer, Birth of a Nation’s reputation is possibly beyond repair, despite some of the favourable reviews it received around its release.
Free State of Jones (2016) – Amazon Prime, Rent/Buy
Although a true-life story, some may detect traces of the ‘white saviour’ trope in Free State of Jones, which concerns the armed revolt against the Confederacy led by Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey) in Jones County, Mississippi.
Although not a box office hit, the picture is an involving one, which reveals a part of Civil War history that I for one was unaware of.
The always good value Mahershala Ali co-stars as Moses Washington, an escaped slave with his own band of followers, who saves Jones from pursuing Confederates and joins him in founding an enclave of equality in the south-east of the state.
12 Years a Slave (2013) – Netflix, Amazon Rent/Buy
Steve McQueen’s (Small Axe) harrowing recounting of the events surrounding the kidnapping and sale into slavery of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) rightly earned three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong’o.
Not an easy watch, especially when Northup falls into the hands of Michael Fassbender’s sadistic cotton farmer Edwin Epps, but one that it’s well worth persevering with in the knowledge that the experiences related in the picture truly happened.
Brad Pitt (who took the sympathetic role of Samuel Bass) was a producer of the movie through his company Plan B, which also co-produced The Underground Railroad.
Django Unchained (2012) – Amazon Buy Only
To older readers, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained may remind you of the 1971 James Garner/Louis Gossett comedy western Skin Game, concerned as it is with a captured slave con operated by a pair of ethnically enlightened rogues.
As usual for Tarantino, the picture goes on too long, and the repeated use of racial epithets upset some, including frequent Tarantino critic Spike Lee.
A first-rate cast includes Jamie Foxx (Django) and Christoph Waltz (Dr. King Schultz) as the two partners in crime, with Leonardo DiCaprio as “Monsieur” Calvin J. Candie, Kerry Washington (Django’s wife Hildi von Shaft, presumably an ancestor of the movie private eye of the same name) and Samuel L. Jackson as the manipulative Candyland plantation major-domo Stephen Warren.
Naturally enough, Tarantino cast himself in a cameo, this time as a credulous Australian miner.
Amistad (1997) – Amazon Rent/Buy
Steven Spielberg’s talky true life legal drama falls a little flat to me, with a slack pace and some performances not quite what they could be.
Detailing the international legal dispute following the interception of a slave ship bound for Cuba by the Washington, a U.S. navy cutter. The status of the captured slaves as free or mere chattels is ultimately resolved in their favour after an impassioned speech by former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins).
There is some dispute over whether Hopkins’ oration really mirrors that of Adams, but I’m afraid the actor’s decision to adopt a peculiar Leprechaun/Jon Pertwee as Worzel Gummidge accent quite spoils the effect for me.
Spielberg ironed out the bugs in Amistad to far better effect in 2012’s Lincoln.
Jefferson in Paris (1995)
A change of pace, and an earlier era, in James Ivory’s painterly biopic about Thomas Jefferson’s (Nick Nolte) time as the US ambassador at the court of Versailles in the years before the outbreak of The French Revolution.
Jefferson’s status as a wealthy slave owner seems at odds with his espousal of freedom, something pointed out by former War of Independence comrade the Marquis de Lafayette (Lambert Wilson).The widower’s affair with Sally Hemings (Thandiwe Newton), his enslaved maid (and half-sister of his late wife) further complicates his life.
Although the picture says that Sally was freed on her return to the United States, this was not in fact the case, in my opinion an unwarranted and unworthy act of artistic licence.
Glory (1989) – Netflix, Amazon Rent/Buy
Ed Zwick’s Civil War epic follows the formation, training and eventual combat experience of the all black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
All black, that is, aside from commanding officers Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) and Major Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes).
There’s a downbeat ending to the film, as all leading cast members (black and white) are mown down by Confederate artillery, with their mass burial in a common grave in a grim reminder that equality at least exists in death. Denzel Washington won a Best Supporting Actor Award for his performance as diamond-in-the-rough Private Trip.
If you feel like watching some more movies in the same vein as my choices, check out Beloved (1998), Amazing Grace (2006), Lincoln (2012, which I’ve written about in a previous Spectator Life piece) and Belle (2013).
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