Such as in the slave mutiny aboard the ship.
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A_Man_of_Iron — 10 years ago(July 03, 2015 08:05 AM)
An interesting interpretation of that from critic Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot:
http://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/739/amistad
In a sense, its also a cinematic corrective, especially provocative considering the controversial first twenty minutes of the film, which plunk viewers down in the middle of the violent skirmish onboard the Amistad, during which Cinques Mende dialogue is never translated with subtitles. Especially disturbing is the fact that their Spanish-speaking captors are often afforded this seeming courtesy. The decisionto subtitle the Spaniard villains but not the Mende heroesis too foregrounded to be an accident; but what does the film gain emotionally or intellectually from it? Some have argued that it leaves the African characters as little more than confused-seeming barking animals, an intimation of racism that, in my opinion, slightly betrays a bias in the viewer; others, famously critic Armond White, praise this choice as a refusal to impress Western language on African characters who stand in for the hundreds of thousands who were to have their languages taken from them. Ultimately, I think this decision (a rare form of audience distancing from Spielberg) is a fascinating and confrontational one, putting English-speaking viewers in the position of dealing with their own predispositions, forcing us to forge connections with the unknown, and a way of reaffirming that it is not our narrative, we are not privileged to it. The first subtitle for an African character comes 23 minutes into the film, when they have arrived on New England shores and one of the men shouts Chief! Chief! at a passing black American in starched-collar, white-man garb. Cinque quickly corrects his friend: Hes not your brother.