Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill now. Good movie, but doesn’t do Tubman nearly enough justice.

Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) is one of those people that you would swear was made up if there weren’t so much evidence that she existed and that she actually did what was claimed she did. It is impossible to condense her life into a two hour movie and do her legacy any justice whatsoever. Her life really deserves to be a one season series on the streaming service of your choice. That said, “Harriet” does a decent job within the time allotted. It faithfully portrays the brutal realities of slavery and introduces Harriet Tubman to a probable much larger audience than would normally know of her exploits beyond her being associated with the Underground Railroad.

The movie’s biggest failing is its insistence on again and again relying on Harriet Tubman’s prophetic “visions”. Tubman had a very serious head injury when she was young and it likely caused her to have epileptic seizures the rest of her life. It was during these seizures that Tubman would have her visions. All evidence points to Tubman seriously believing that these visions were God speaking directly to her. She was a woman of mighty faith. In the movie, they keep happening at key points and the visions would tell her what to do and where to go. This gets a bit too ahistorical for me and it is done at the expense of telling more about her actual deeds.

There is also this weird need for an enemy in the movie and that is accomplished through more ahistorical use of Tubman’s “owner” Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn). In the movie, he furiously hunts her down and placates the audience with the final showdown the studios think the audience wants. I do understand that stories about real people are notoriously hard to end, but couldn’t the filmmakers relied on some real life harrowing moment to end the movie? Or was Tubman’s life not harrowing enough?

“Harriet” is still a good movie and the acting is really good in it. My disappointment is more in wanting Tubman to have justice than in the quality of the movie. She seriously deserves to be on our $20 bill and I sincerely hope we have a non-racist President next to put her back on track to be there.