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Harriet

Discussion in 'Movies' started by Morgotha, Nov 6, 2019.

  1. Morgotha

    Morgotha Well-Known Member

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    This is a movie about the life of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who repeatedly put herself in danger freeing others at great risk to herself. She's an American Hero, and unfortunately, the people who made the movie seem to agree, and to all appearances tried to portray her in as an historical figure.

    What I was hoping to get from the movie was a sense of who Harriet Tubman was as a person, a real woman who suffered and was happy, won and failed, loved, lost, and found, fought and overcame the barriers against her - and I didn't get that. The movie starts off as Harriet, who is a slave and who's married to a man who is free, finds out her owner isn't going to free her or her potential children to be as he is obligated to. This prompts her desire to run to freedom. She gets advice from her father and minister and heads to Philadelphia, running alone through the countryside. This is well and good as an introduction, but along the way she has what seems like a seizure, and receives a vision that she interprets as which way to go, and that's where things start to fall apart.

    First, she is having these visions because when she was a little girl she was beaten by a slave owner to the point that her head was cracked open. We are told about this in hindsight. This event was really the most formative event in her life! If there EVER was a time to show a flashback of something happening as if it was real time, this is it! Unfortunately, the director felt that telling us about it in hindsight would be good enough. While we're on the subject, I really didn't like the whole "visions" thing constantly directing her which way to run through the woods. As I understand it, Harriet had a strong *faith* in God and Providence that allowed her to face hardships and keep moving on. The movie made it look like she had magic powers that helped her survive, which is kind of a letdown for those of us needing inspiration who do NOT have magic powers, and would like to have an example of a normal woman who achieves great things. LOL, now that I think about it, there was a third episode of her "visions" seeming more like magic powers when she turned a gun on her former owner and said, "do you hear it? That's the sound of young men dying years from now in a battle here, and you will die with them". What was the point of that? Is she supposed to be a faithful servant of the Lord, or Miss Cleo?

    She does make it to Philadelphia, and meets the Underground Railroad and becomes a part of their organization. She also meets a born-free black woman who owns a boarding house and is self-sufficient and with whom Harriet will be boarding. She tells Harriet that she will draw her a bath and tells her she needs one, and Harriet goes off on her, saying something like, "what do you know of the terrified sweat you get running through the woods with people chasing you?" and the woman apologizes saying she doesn't. There was another scene like this later on in the movie where Harriet was addressing a group of the Railroad people saying, "what do YOU know of the horrors of slavery to try and tell me what to do and what not to?" and by this point, it was clearly a problem in the movie. If anything, we should have SEEN the horrors of slavery, not to the point of being a gorefest, but at least to the point that we would be able to be on Harriet's side - knowing the horror that these others who weren't exposed to it didn't. With the movie, though, we were outsiders being scolded by Harriet because we didn't know what she went through. I'd contrast it to Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" that had a scourging scene that stuck with you for its violence and cruelty. He didn't try to TELL you what Christ went through, he SHOWED you, and I doubt if many people could sit through seeing it without feeling very uncomfortable. If the slaves were shown to be undergoing that type of treatment as well, it would outrage the audience when these well-meaning abolitionists didn't understand the horror they were fighting against, but as it was? Nope, it was just Harriet telling us she knows and we don't. A missed opportunity.

    One thing that got to me personally was, again, something in the film that was just shoved in in a couple second clip, but I felt was meaningful. When the slaves were shown working in the field, they were just there working. No one was abusing them or anything, and when Harriet goes to free a group of them, she says "here" and throws a bag of shoes on the ground for them to wear. That's it. What you had to think about on your own was that this meant was that all the time these men and women were working in the fields with hoes and other sharp tools they were doing so *without shoes on their feet*! How profound it is that having something as simple as a pair of shoes would mean so much to help them run away through the woods, and how much of a failure of the movie was it to just gloss over it in an instant?

    Something else that was not really explored was the dependence on slaves of their owners. When things started going down hill on the plantation, one wondered why they wouldn't just torture a slave in to giving up information on the runaways. Was it out of the kindness of the owners' hearts? No, the answer is that they couldn't - those slaves were their livelihood, and if they injured them to where the slaves couldn't work, their owners wouldn't make any money to live, which effectively put the slave owners in a trap. Maybe it's out of the scope of this movie, but it would have been neat to see it explored a bit.

    Finally, if I remember correctly, later in life Harriet Tubman remarried and had children with her new husband. The movie lists as an afterward that she later died at home at the ripe old age of 91 surrounded by her family. I would have liked to see SOME of her "free" life with her new family in the movie to show that all her struggle paid off. Nope.

    So in summary then... I guess I'd say it reminded me of a movie you'd find in an American history museum -- one that was sterilized enough not to offend anyone or come too close to any sensitive topics. And that's fine for a museum, but was disappointing to see as a major motion picture where the possibilities to have us really understand who Harriet Tubman WAS were so much higher.
     
    #1 Morgotha, Nov 6, 2019
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2019
  2. Jama

    Jama Well-Known Member

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    I liked it.
     

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