‘Amistad’ slow paced> Film too often ends up being coldly detached

“AMISTAD,” directed by Steven Spielberg, written by David Franzoni. Running time: 145 minutes. Rated R for violence and brief nudity. Currently playing at the Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville, and at Hoyts Cinemas.

You cannot shackle the human spirit. You cannot beat it down, you cannot silence it with a fiercely cracked whip, you cannot sever it with knives and you cannot kill it with the poison of racism.

Again and again, the human spirit will rise up in bodies of untold thousands to prove that it cannot, will not be defeated. It is stronger than any metal, more resilient than any attempt to crush it, more powerful than any evil. The human spirit demands to be free, knows that it must be free, as that is its right.

In Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad,” the true story of 44 slaves in 1839 who were brought to trial for rising up against and brutally murdering the crew of the Spanish slave ship La Amistad, the human spirit does soar, but it is forced to do so in an imperfect film that is too long by a third and bogged down by a maddeningly slow pace. There are a handful of gripping moments and flashes of true genius here, but “Amistad” too often is too coldly detached to be the deeply moving film it could have been. Indeed, it suffers from an academic feel that hangs over it like an invisible, suffocating cloud, and does not so much focus on its characters as it does on the laws that bind some of its characters to lives of slavery.

These shortcomings raise obvious questions: Regardless of his good intentions, was a white director the best choice to tell this particular story of slavery? Could he bring to the film the same depth of insight and level of emotions as, for instance, a black director could?

Perhaps these questions are best answered with other questions: Was “Schindler’s List” powerful because it had the insight of a Jewish director at its helm? Or could just anyone have elicited that same power?

“Amistad” features characters so thinly drawn, they never seem fully human. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the unofficial leader of the slaves who organizes the revolt upon La Amistad, has a powerful, foreboding presence that looks great on film, but we never truly know him.

As the film opens, he is seen desperately trying to remove the chains and shackles that bind him to the ship; it’s a haunting image shot against the fury of an electrical storm. When he succeeds in freeing himself and the other slaves, he begins barking orders that are not translated with subtitles (as they are later in the film), but left for us to decipher. This is a mistake. Instead of crucial insight into this man, these people, this moment, we hear only the raw, guttural rage of another language from characters who do not yet exist as individuals. Thus, when they go above deck to begin the long, gruesome slaughter that ensues, the impact is shocking, yet dehumanized. We’re siding with these slaves, but who are they? The film offers a brief, disturbing flashback, but never fully or adequately explores that question.

Besides Hounsou, whose performance is moving in spite of his character’s limitations, the only other memorable performance comes not from Matthew McConaughey, who is dull as Roger Baldwin, the lawyer who represents the slaves in court, or from Morgan Freeman, whose abolitionist Theodore Joadson is about as compelling as the film’s meandering pace, but from Anthony Hopkins.

As President John Quincy Adams, a 74-year-old man retired from office but still serving his country in the House of Representatives, Hopkins lifts the film’s last 45 minutes when he becomes its centerpiece. Preoccupied, doddering and vain, Adams addresses the Supreme Court in a summation of exquisite American rhetoric that is so powerful, it proves to be the key that not only frees these slaves, but also launches a civil revolution. Grade: C

Video of the week

“G.I. JANE,” directed by Ridley Scott. Running time: 125 minutes. Rated R for language and violence.

Throughout Ridley Scott’s latest, which explores whether a woman has the grit, strength and nerve it takes to survive Navy SEAL training, Demi Moore, who has never looked quite so enthusiastically fit, proves that the bionic woman never died. Indeed, she merely metamorphosed into Moore.

With characteristic mettle, Moore proves in this entertaining film that she indeed has the right stuff: She sweats, she swears, she smokes cigars, she fights in head-to-head combat with her commanding officer and she shaves her head bald. But in so doing she loses her sexual identity and becomes not so much a man or a woman, but a driven beast. It’s a fascinating transformation that is ultimately unfortunate. Is the film suggesting that a woman must become manlike to fight in a war? It would seem so. Still, as entertainment, it works and at the very least should be seen for Anne Bancroft’s sterling performance as the unscrupulous Sen. Lillian DeHaven. Grade: B+

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the NEWS.