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Cynthia Erivo Soulfully Resurrects a Legend


Biopics are really a dime a dozen lately. For the last decade, the dawn of Oscar-bait season has been marked by movies if not directly about a specific figure, then telling a true story. It can get tiresome and tedious, as was the case with the recent Judy –to say nothing of films like Tolkien, Green Book, On the Basis of Sex, Bohemian Rhapsody, Darkest Hour, Sully, Snowden, The Theory of Everything, and The Imitation Game. But every year there are a few that break through the mold of mediocrity on the merits of a performance or style –and Harriet is thankfully marginally one of them.
Almost the singular thing that saves Kasi Lemmons’ retelling of the extraordinary life story of Harriet Tubman is the performance of Cynthia Erivo in the title role. The British theatre actress and singer who broke onto the movie scene last year in Bad Times at the El Royale (in the scene-stealing role of that ensemble movie) and Widows is a force of nature in this film: powerful and passionate and commanding of your attention from start to finish. Erivo’s Harriet embodies all the precepts of a great leader, is soulful and solemn, but driven by a righteous fury and emboldened sense of justice. She carries herself in the first act with the quiet melancholy of Celie from The Color Purple (a role for which she’s won a Tony on Broadway), but without any sense of resignation, picking up a formidable courage through the films’ back half. The film certainly embellishes some details of her life and work and has to condense a lot of history (the story may have been better serviced as a miniseries), but through it all her evolution from slave to freedom fighter to deliverer on a mythic scale openly equated with the Biblical Moses is engrossing and elating. Conveying such depth of experience, hardened determination, brazen independence, and a wicked resourcefulness, yet not without the shadows of trauma and vulnerability, Erivo dramatically proves herself one of the great new movie actresses and makes an excellent case for an Academy Award nomination. It says a lot that she can even lend credence to Harriet’s premonitions, interpreted as messages from God.
The film deals with that clairvoyant angle in a very matter-of-fact way, unusual in an age when biopics generally try to stick to realism. In a manner reminiscent of movies like The Song of Bernadette, Harriet suggests the extrasensory perception of its central historical figure is entirely legitimate –that God showed Harriet visions of the future to guide her on her slave-rescuing crusades. Whether this is a choice on Lemmons’ part to honour and acquiesce to the real Harriet’s devout feelings, or to impart a belief of her own, or to simply recall the similar psychic material of her first film Eve’s Bayou, I’m not sure; but the story is rather secular otherwise, making Harriet’s precognition an odd piece of magical realism that doesn’t wholly gel with the tone of the rest of the movie.
That tone stresses a clear arc as the story of Harriet Tubman is compressed and modified to fit the films’ conventions. The dramatic immediacy of the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 feels more directly intense and violent than it was in reality (though granted as a Canadian such episodes weren’t much taught in my history classes), and the smooth-talking abusive slave owner played by The Favourite’s Joe Alwyn, who grew up alongside Harriet, is likely a composite of a number of slave owners she and most of her brethren were unfortunate to be at the mercy of. He is designated the films’ primary antagonist in one of the scripts’ weaker choices, as it has the side effect of reducing Harriet’s motivations down to the actions of a singular white man rather than her own sense of egalitarian justice.
Nevertheless, the films’ desire for heightened tension benefits from having such a looming shadow representing slavery as a constant threat. Each rescue is played with a compelling sense of urgency, building at the same rate as Harriet’s tenacity, new factors coming into play (including a couple Uncle Tom bounty hunters) and it’s all the more thrilling when she and her party manage to escape by a hairs’ breadth from captivity. Set at night and largely through woods, it’s much like the Ringwraith chase scenes from the early parts of The Fellowship of the Ring; the same momentum, gripping danger, and rousing pay-off, only sustained repeatedly over the course of the whole film. And it’s worth acknowledging that the recurring glimpses into the concerns of the slave owners, their cruelty, and especially their embarrassment and fear contributes to the efficacy of these sequences the film is built on.
Dramatic licence permeates the details and presentation of Harriet, but the spirit of her story and the magnitude of her actions is conveyed without a trace of falsehood. Abetted and elevated by one of the best performances of the year from a tremendous breakout star, the viewer is left with the image of a remarkable woman and heroine who saved lives and changed history. This film is not the stirring epic it perhaps deserves to be, its filmmaking satisfactory if not exemplary. However there is one moment Lemmons and Erivo know to emphasize with grand visual language: Harriet’s freedom at the end of her initial journey on the Underground Railroad –shot against a crisp sunrise in a single take full of sweeping emotion and a breathtaking quiet joyousness. That feeling of liberty is profound, and the knowledge she will bring it to so many is more than enough to reassure audiences of a legacy worthy of monument, museum, and more. Put her on that twenty dollar bill already!

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