The extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes, whose courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and c... Read allThe extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes, whose courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.The extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes, whose courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.
- Nominated for 2 Oscars
- 21 wins & 55 nominations total
- Henry Ross
- (as Antonio J. Bell)
- Miz Lucy
- (as Daphne Maxwell Reid)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaHarriet Tubman really did experience visions as is depicted in the film. Many historians claim that this is likely due to a head injury she received in her youth.
- GoofsAfter the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, William Still gives a speech saying that it allows slave catchers to seek slaves in any state in the Union. Slave catchers were already able to retrieve slaves from the North, due to a law passed decades earlier. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 expanded the powers available to slave catchers, including forcing Northern law enforcement to aid them, and weakened the protections available to those accused of being escaped slaves, such as previous requirements that a suspect's status as a slave had to be verified in a jury trial.
- Quotes
Harriet: [to Gideon, at gunpoint] You'll die right here. On a frozen, blood-soaked battlefield, the moans of a generation of young men in your ears, dying in agony around you, for a lost cause. For a vile and wicked idea! For the sin of slavery! Can you hear them? God don't mean people to own people, Gideon! Our time is near!
- Crazy credits1800's type photographs of the cast with their names in the credits.
- ConnectionsFeatured in CTV News at Six Toronto: Episode dated 10 September 2019 (2019)
Abolitionist Harriet Tubman escaped from Maryland to Philadelphia in 1849 on foot by following the North Star and utilizing the help of the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses set up by white abolitionists and free people of color to help slaves to freedom. She then repeatedly risked her life by going back into the lion's den over a period of eleven years to lead other slaves to their freedom. She never lost a passenger. This is so damn brave it makes my head spin.
This film served up a substantantial serving of history, embellished by a modicum of fiction. Though it's not a movie masterpiece, it's a strong depiction of Harriet's Heroes Journey that lifted me up for days. Cynthia Erivo's portrayal of a determined Harriet, known before her liberation as Araminta "Minty" Ross, (and later nicknamed Moses because she helped her people escape to freedom), was stirring; her singing was the gold on the edges. Harriet used spirituals as coded messages to warn fellows of danger or to signal a clear path.
The antagonist in the story is the racist, corrupt system of slavery embodied in part by her heartless owners. Plagued by hypersomnia sleeping spells caused by a head injury when she was thirteen, Minty's owner Edward Bodess tried to sell her. This would separate her from her family. There were no buyers for her. Angry, Minty prayed, "Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way." Edward died. Harriet expressed regret for that prayer.
Joe Alwyn played Gideon Brodess, Edward's grown son, with a conniving, lecherous sneer. Guideon leered after Minty and tormented her. Harriet's husband was a free black man in theory, but not reality; any future children of the couple would be slaves, regardless of papers granting manumet to Harriet's kin, which the Brodesses ignored. She and her husband planned to escape together, but Tubman fled alone and travelled a hundred miles through wilderness to Pennsylvania, being followed by her scummy owner Gildeon. Well, screw him, she made it, and became a heroine.
- Sasha_Lauren
- Feb 11, 2020
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $17,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $43,082,155
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $11,676,720
- Nov 3, 2019
- Gross worldwide
- $43,347,017
- Runtime2 hours 5 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1