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-g...