I guess the first time I heard the name Harriet Tubman would have been in the 4th grade..My teacher Mr. Cash was very serious about issues around race back then with awakening civil rights movement 1957. Even then he called her “Moses” This new film “Harriet” should in no way be just an introduction to Harriet Tubman..Like me most of us should have been hearing about her for our whole lives. But of course that’s not true. In these times when we are actually talking about honoring Tubman by putting her likeness on the 20 dollar bill. And with a person in the White House who seems to be determined to turn back the clock on race relations..This could be just the right time to remind this country that it belongs to African Americans as much as it belongs to any body else. This particular film “Harriet” ..directed by Kasi Lemmons …best remembered as director of “Eves Bayou” ( 1997 ) and starring Cynthia Erivo and Leslie Odum Jr. Opened last week BIG..First off by any standards it’s a beautifully shot film, that begins with a bang and never let’s up. The title character is first drawn in bold strokes…but they spend the rest of the movie filling in the details..We learn how in scene after scene just how the very real Harriet Tubman earned her place in American history. One area where
the film walks over new ground is that there is no place in the film where slavery is romanticized or stereotyped ..Even the very first scene shows a slave preacher played by old friend Vondie Curtis-Hall who turns out to be nothing like who he seems in the first scene or what we may expect…In fact the best thing about this film is just how complex life as a slave was. It’s shown in ways no matter how well informed you think you were about slavery most of us would have never expected…YES there were actually times when running or escaping may not have been the best thing to do. Yes there were times when the worst enemy of an escaping slave was a free black person. And yes ..the fate of women in antebellum America was linked directly with the fate of the non-white..in good ways and in perverse ways. So yes this is a film that covers a lot of familiar territory ..but one of the best things it does is educates us to the fact that the current position of a lot of “newly minted’ black activists ..who love to say..”We don’t need to see any more slave movies”..well they are wrong totally wrong. We have not seen enough slave movies or heard enough slave stories..Because so much of the “slave” still haunts the way Black people think in America ..and the way we act in America..and how much of the western individualistic ..”me first” culture we learned from our masters is still there. That being said..for all Americans no matter what color…It’s long past time we learned about one of the great patriots in our county’s history ..and see that Harriet Tubman is not just the old lady picture we have all seen hundred of times ..but a vibrant, brave woman of action…Now here comes the “tricky” part.. this was a fictional movie based on the life of a very real person..But this story is an adaptation ..and it took many “liberties”..Harriet Tubman made many trips back to rescue slaves …just like anyone else she made mistakes ..many..but she learned from them and became with much effort one of the best conductors on the “Underground Railroad”…in the film they make a little bit of a stretch ..they give her what I like to call “spidey senses”..she in the film is sort of made to see the future, Tubman did have fainting spells due to a brain injury she suffered early in life ..but seeing the future ??…this is simply not true but I have to admit it did add to the drama…a cheap trick..made a GREAT story…The other even more strange thing is that all over the internet there are conspiracy theory people already saying that the fact that a couple of the bad guys in the film were black ..means that ..”they” are trying to “smear” black people …well the truth is just like now there were black good guys and black bad guys ..so…GO SEE THE FILM..don’t expect it to be perfect NO FILM IS ..help people raise funds to make another like it if you don’t like it. Timothy L. Hayes
Follow
