Harriet

This film comes to London with the accompanying news item that, when the script was originally touted around in the 1990s, producers wanted the famed and revered former turned liberator, to be played by Julia Roberts. What sounds like absurd clickbait nonsense is true, and an indication of what the movie business can be like, and also how 12 Years A Slave proved that audiences will go and watch a film about slavery. This film, starring London-born Cynthia Erivo as Tubman, is a lengthy and quite harrowing look at the era. It’s not as violent as 12 Years A Slave although the violence is seen in evidence on the faces and the bodies of the slaves. It’s a companion to that film, and would also pair well with Spielberg’s biopic of Abraham Lincoln.

The real Harriet Tubman

Tubman is born into slavery but marries free man John Tubman. But when her slave owner dies and she and others are to be sold off, Tubman decides to make her escape. The beginning of the film is a fairly slow-going introduction to the society where these people are literally regarded as property. It behoves everyone never to fail to be revolted at the sight of white slave owners depicted belittling their slaves. The owners of Harriet and other is led by the vile Gideon (Joe Alwyn) who is despicable, and his wife is just as repugnant.

Tubman escapes and becomes part of the Underground Railroad, the network of rescuers run out of Philadelphia, where all black people can live in freedom. Harriet meets William Still (Leslie Odom Jr), and immediately makes it clear that she’s not escaped to freedom just to work and continue her life. A very spiritual woman with an incredible voice, Tubman makes many trips south against Still’s advice at first, to recover as many slaves as she possibly can. Harriet Tubman became one of the best ‘conductors’ on the Underground Railroad. In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act because slave owners were losing revenue as their slaves were being taken. At the height of her activity she was known as “Moses” and was said by slave owners to be a white “abolitionist’ in blackface.

The escapes are presented as tense action sequences. Harriet Tubman declares herself in charge of the groups, and even though they bicker about her methods she demonstrates her effectiveness. One scene where she walks across a river to evade captors on horseback is particularly effective. This image and the use of Spirituals including “Go Down Moses”. At one point Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” brings an entirely more modern looking feel as compared to Leslie Odom Jr in a big top hat, and putting “Sinnerman” seems like something that Spike Lee would do with this story. There’s a tremendous amount of restraint here: what’s a wake-up moment is when the people who are free in the North don’t seem to ‘get’ why Harriet will risk herself again and again to bring people out of slavery—you can’t fully understand something that you haven’t at first hand experienced.

The subject is fascinating and the film is an engaging introduction to the life of this, one of the only women to lead men in battle during the Civil War. Cynthia Erivo is incredible, embodying the pain and the determination. And Leslie Odom Jr, who was Aaron Burr in the original production of Hamilton, is great as one of the Railroad’s leaders. There’s a montage sequence of the determined Tubman bringing group after group of liberated slaves to his office, and in typical montage fashion he falls off his chair in surprise at one point. The film may not have the reverential tone of other historical dramas—and it doesn’t attempt to connect the story to modern racial division, which is possibly a good thing but also makes it less popular and so less well marketed. It’s however a quietly wonderful film that’s bound to be of interest to anyone who enjoys the subject or the era. And the central performance is definitely worth seeing because Cynthia Erivo is so good.