If it weren’t for Chris Rock getting slapped at the Oscars on March 27, Will Smith would certainly be very close to getting another Oscar nomination for EmancipationAntoine Fuqua’s drama in which he is brutally abused and tortured, being racially abused like a slave, and which just premiered on Apple TV+ in streaming.
Smith’s character is the famous “Whipping Peter,” a loser whose suffering became an iconic image of the abolitionist when he was portrayed by photographers, topless, face turned, back lined with eyelashes.
Academy Award for King Richard It is Peter, a selfless and believing Christian family man, who in 1863 suffers, like his family, slavery on a southern cotton plantation. President Abraham Lincoln makes the Proclamation of the Emancipation of the Slaves on January 1, but neither Peter nor any of his companions know about it.
Yes, the Confederate Guards who watch over them when Peter is separated from his wife (Charmaine Bingwa) and children, and sent to work building railroads.
There is Jim Fassel (Ben Foster, one of the protagonists of Nothing to loose), a slave hunter who has the task of persecuting and capturing – when not killing them – those who dare to flee.
Sure, Peter, who is brave, experienced and fears nothing, will take advantage of an oversight, a tumult, to escape, accompanied by three other African-American prisoners.
And, as you can imagine, the one chasing them, together with two henchmen – one of them, black – and hunting dogs, is Fassel.
There is a lot about Hugh Glass, the character for which Leonardo DiCaprio won his Oscar the avenger, in Peter during that incessant search. He won’t fight a bear, but he will fight an alligator when he has to cross the swamps of Louisiana, on his way to Baton Rouge, where the Union Army is located.
strong scenes
The scenes of violence are strong, perhaps in the extreme, but nothing surprising given the director Antoine Fuqua (Training day Y the vigilanteboth with Denzel Washington, or Revengewith Jake Gyllenhaal) behind the scenes.
Bill Collage’s screenplay – come on lazy Exodus: Gods and KingsY Assassin’s Creed– makes the movie change. He never leaves the climate of incessant anguish, but the vicissitudes or what Peter has to face. First is the estrangement from his wife and children, then the abuse on the rails, then the persecution, and there will be more.
Until the movie adopts an epic, heroic tone, but hey, as we’ve already made clear, it’s based on true events. Cruelty never leaves the screen.
So that Emancipation Turns out to be a magnet, a film that is hard to look away from helps a lot for the monochromatic tone, black and white photography by Robert Richardson (Platoon, jfk, The aviator), that some hint of color is permitted, such as flames of fire or some vegetation, taken with the permission of Schindler’s List.
Not so the music of Marcelo Zarvos, the Brazilian composer of Extraordinarytoo stilted.
“Emancipation”
Very good
Drama. USA, 2022. Original title: “Emancipation”. 132′, SA 16. Of: Antonio Fuqua. Starring: Will Smith, Ben Foster, Charmaine Bingwa. Available in: AppleTV+.
Source: Clarin
