Thoughts on Amistad

Today in class, Mrs. Quinet showed us Steven Spielberg's Amistad. Although earlier in the week I had hoped that we would watch Mean Girls, I am so glad we watched this movie instead. I remember briefly learning about the Amistad case last year in American History. The movie, however, burned in my memory a disturbing portrayal of the facts that we had previously absorbed as merely more information from our textbook to memorize for the next test. The Amistad does not shy away from showing the gruesome treatment of the African victims of the slave trade, and helps open audiences eyes to the grim history that so many wish to brush off and forget about. The Amistad, although it may have its minor historical inaccuracies as Mrs. Quinet pointed out while we were watching, serves to depict the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in an disturbingly detailed and accurate way. It's so much more than just a tear jerker; similar in this way to Spielberg's Schindler's List, he gives voices and faces to the so often forgotten in our country's dark past. I also think the movie was a great ending to our unit on Things Fall Apart. Sengbe's speech to John Quincy Adams reminded me of the Ibo beliefs about the afterlife and ancestors that I blogged about earlier this week.