Admittedly, I don’t know much about the life of Harriet Tubman. I know she was an escaped slave who became a very successful conductor on the Underground Railroad, she is supposed to get her face on the $20 bill at some point, and that’s about it.
As such, though I don’t expect to really learn anything from a Hollywood biopic, perhaps the new movie Harriet will at least entice me to learn more.
The movie opens on the Maryland farm where the future Harriet Tubman (here known as “Minty” by one and all) is requesting her freedom from her master. She’s married to a free black man, her father is a free black man, and the master’s grandfather had put into his will that Minty and all her brothers and sisters would be freed upon as soon as Minty’s mother, still a slave, turned 45. That was a number of years ago. Naturally, the old master refuses and sends both Minty’s husband and father away.
So, right off the bat we see the old master as the bad guy that he is, but he isn’t the movie’s main antagonist in human form. That position would fall to his son, soon master of the farm in his own right. The old man may dismiss slaves as mere property, but the son’s first lines say God doesn’t hear the prayers of, well, let’s just say the N-word and leave it at that. Indeed, while the movie never shies away from depicting the evils of slavery, the character of Gideon Brodess comes across as almost cartoonishly evil compared to the more everyday evil of the rest of the slaveowners, slavecatchers, and others working to the benefit of slavery.
However, Minty soon escapes completely by herself and manages to get to Philadelphia. A slave getting away alone for so many miles is almost unheard of, but Minty suffers from what looks like narcolepsy and has reoccurring black-and-white premonitions in her dreams. She believes God talks to her in those moments and offers guidance. And while other characters may not believe Minty, soon redubbing herself as “Harriet Tubman,” to actually be hearing from God, the movie itself seems to take the possibility sincerely.
As it is, her success soon leads Harriet to go South and return with as many slaves as she can, particularly members of her own family.
So, what to make of this movie? Up and coming actress Cynthia Erivo does bring a bit of fire to the role of Tubman, but the script doesn’t really bring anything new to the biopic genre. The pacing is also a bit odd. Harriet’s initial escape seems to be over inside of the first twenty minutes, her training for what she ends up doing amounts to a single scene and maybe three instructions, and her various premonitions seem to occur as the plot needs them to. Most of the performances are fine but not much better. And despite the fact I don’t know much about the real Tubman’s life, I am pretty sure she didn’t get a chance to give her former master a speech about freedom and the evils of slavery. The way that guy always seems to be two steps behind her seemed a little unlikely, but like I said, I don’t know much about her actual life.
If anyone can recommend a good book on Harriet Tubman, let me know.
So, aside from a good performance from Erivo, there wasn’t much special to the rest of the movie. It wasn’t bad, but I think both Erivo and Harriet Tubman deserve better.
Grade: C+
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