Most of the most important part of the movie Emancipation (Available on Apple TV+) Antoine Fuqua, take the time to recreate a moment in history. The director’s camera meticulously watches as the slave shows his scars to the camera.
In the middle of the 18th century, photography was a novelty, a fair phenomenon. But this time he broke through the veil of history. Therefore, the director gives it the appearance of an extraordinary, unique event. He shows with almost surgical precision how history is built.
Gordon (played by the handsome Will Smith), called “Peter” to protect his identity, knows his body is evidence. That every scar that crosses his back is a fact that hides many more. But it is also a deep and painful history of the community. His country, hundreds of armed people who died daily on the battlefield. In this way, Fukua allows this unique moment that shook American culture to become something more.
Actually most of Emancipation, is a reflection on the horrors that people commit against themselves. About the historical cruelty that genocide and wars support as a demonstration of a wigwam of realistic evil. But moving away from much of the slavery-related films, Fuqua analyzes violence from the perspective of a search for redemption.
Like an image that would startle and move the world, Emancipation is a storytelling that seeks to uphold the idea that the future can be rewritten. That in fact it can be supported and permeated with completely unknown spaces until it shows something completely new.
A mysterious story that keeps a powerful journey
Both in Fukua’s film and in real history, the question of testimony and truth comes first. In fact, one of the film’s strongest lines shows that the intent of the plot is to remember. Explain why the photo of the “Failed Peter” is of great importance for the future.
At the same time, why is the film reminiscent of an almost forgotten fact in an unprecedented historical annals. Both films are reconstructed and linked to support the perception of good and evil. For Fuqua, American morality is of great importance. So much so that a good part of the dialogue is destined to retrospectively recall why photography is a historical milestone. Emancipación is based on slavery and, of course, explores its pain.
Witness to a terrible event
But this is not the case in the general idea of a larger event. It focuses on a human survivor of horrors, on the unsettling thought of hundreds of victims who are never recognized. Will Smith’s Gordon is a cautious version of the American conscience. At the same time, about the sole responsibility of every man and woman in the face of violence. “I want the whole world to know what happened,” the character repeats more than once. Moreover, he does so with a strong sense of turning his own story into an invaluable testimony.
To Emancipation, is trying to be a movie version of Whipped Peter. About the inevitable and increasingly harsh memory, about some kind of perverted perception of race, capable of leaving wounds in an entire country. Photography builds a hero, it also allows Gordon to be a witness. Gradually, as his story is told in surprisingly dark and uncomfortable scenes, it becomes clear that Fukua wants the viewer to ask questions.
This calls nature into question the goodness and purpose of his character. He succeeds by placing him at the center of the story, carrying what he hopes to tell on his shoulders. Like the Wicked Peter photo, Will Smith’s character is a man who knows his history, he has the weight of silence. A variant of cruelty that no one has encountered so far. From pure hopelessness.
Document, film, unanswered questions
In 1863, two photographers did the unthinkable in a North America torn apart by civil war. They took an abused slave and photographed the story told by his scars. Emancipation he takes that fact and turns it into a crack in the American narrative about his own sins. As the same argument makes clear, prior to this there was little visual evidence of what happened in the labor camps.
But the figure of the former slave Gordon, unequivocally showing the cruel treatment to which the slaves were subjected, put the world to a standstill. Emancipation he wants this bewilderment to be an eternal look at time. A broad conception of North American identity in relation to the brutality of historical heritage. Something he achieves with patience and a powerful momentum that turns it into a tough, uncomfortable film, but also a brilliant narrative exercise about pain.
Source: Hiper Textual
