Harriet review: A flashy, formulaic biopic of one of America’s great heroes

The film would have felt more at home if it had been released in the Nineties, when Gregory Allen Howard wrote the first version of the script

Clarisse Loughrey

Thursday 21 November 2019 11:35 GMT

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Harriet - Trailer

Dir: Kasi Lemmons. Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr, Joe Alwyn, and Janelle Monáe. 12A cert, 126 mins.

A handful of films about Harriet Tubman should have been made by now. She escaped slavery, and then turned back and helped countless others. During the Civil War, she became the first woman in US history to lead a military expedition. She’s one of America’s great heroes, with a story of such risk and bravery that it seems primed for the big screen. You have Hollywood’s institutional racism to thank for the fact that Harriet is the first major biopic dedicated to her.

What a shame, then, that Harriet is such a flashy, formulaic film. It takes historical reality and stretches it over the canvas of an old-fashioned adventure story – at one point, someone genuinely utters the phrase, “We’ve got company”. The film attempts to cover all the basics of Tubman’s life, including her escape to Philadelphia in 1849 and her missions back into the slave-owning states of the South. She saved an estimated 70 slaves over the course of 13 expeditions, earning her the title of “Moses”. An epilogue covers the Combahee River Raid, an armed assault she led during the Civil War that resulted in the rescue of more than 750 slaves.

This isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from Kasi Lemmons, whose directorial debut Eve’s Bayou – a drama rich with the mysticism of the Southern Gothic – remains one of the most impressive first features ever made. But Harriet would, at least, have felt more at home if it had been released in the Nineties, when Gregory Allen Howard wrote the first version of the film’s script – a time when historical biopics (such as Braveheart) were expected to be both epic and a little overcooked. Terence Blanchard’s score feels like it was ripped from this era, too. It often intrudes on the drama, announcing every single one of Tubman’s heroic acts with the swell of an orchestra.

Still, Cynthia Erivo is magnificent in the role of Tubman. It’s a performance driven by pure will, and a desire to understand how a woman who’d suffered so much could continue to put one foot in front of the other and push forward. She’s gorgeously costumed by Paul Tazewell in jewel-toned dresses, layered coats, and hats set at the perfect angle. Yet Erivo is hampered by Lemmons and Howard’s script, interested only in upholding the myth of an American icon, not revealing the humanity that lived within it.

Directors who have made cameos in films

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1/21Directors who have made cameos in films

Directors who have made cameos in films

Steven Spielberg in The Blues Brothers (1980)

He’s had some cameos in his own films including the voice of the radio operator in Jaws and as a man watching the news in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He's turned up in other people’s films too, such as Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black. But in John Landis’s The Blues Brothers, he is unforgettable as a bureaucrat who stamps a receipt for the Blue Brothers, played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

Universal Pictures

Directors who have made cameos in films

John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

John Huston played a background blackjack player in his Marilyn Monroe-starring film The Misfits in 1961 and as a barman in Moby Dick in 1956. But perhaps most memorable is his cameo as a well-dressed American tourist who is pestered for money by drifter Fred C Hobbs (Humphrey Bogart) in his Oscar-winning drama The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Apparently, Humphrey Bogart directed the scene and took pleasure in making Huston perform it over and over again.

Warner Bros

Directors who have made cameos in films

Quentin Tarantino in Little Nicky (2000)

The director has had roles in many of his own films: his voice was the answer machine message in Jackie Brown; he plays one of 88 masked ninjas in Kill Bill and Jimmy Dimmick in Pulp Fiction. But his intermittent appearance in Steven Brill’s film as a blind deacon, who recognises Adam Sandler’s character as the son of the devil, is perhaps the weirdest.

Rex Features

Directors who have made cameos in films

Peter Jackson in Hot Fuzz (2007)

Like Hitchcock, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit director is known for making cameos in his own films. Though his most notable cameo was “carrot man” in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, more surprising was his brief turn in Edgar Wright’s police comedy. Dressed up as a Father Christmas, he stabs Simon Pegg’s Sergeant Angel in the hand at the beginning of the film.

Universal Pictures

Directors who have made cameos in films

Wes Craven in Scream (1996)

Principal Himbry (Henry Winkler) is working late at school when he hears a knock at his door. The only person he sees when he goes to open it is the janitor, played by director Wes Craven, who is dressed as Freddie Krueger, his own creation.

Dimension Films

Directors who have made cameos in films

Terrence Malik in Badlands (1973)

The famously reclusive director made a brief and unexpected cameo in his film Badlands. The actor he hired to play “caller at rich man’s house” where Kit (Michael Sheen) and Holly (Sissy Spacek) are hiding out, didn’t turn up, so Malik played the part himself.

Warner Bros

Directors who have made cameos in films

Stanley Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

He’s not credited, but Stanley Kubrick is sitting in a booth at the Sonata Café in this thriller starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. When Dr Bill Hartford (Cruise) is invited to an orgy by Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), Kubrick – understandably – glances twice at Bill.

Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock

Directors who have made cameos in films

Alfred Hitchcock in North by Northwest (1959)

The director was known for his signature cameos, and found ingenious ways to insert himself into his own films. In North by Northwest, he plays a man missing a bus just after the credit “directed by Alfred Hitchcock” passes on screen.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Directors who have made cameos in films

Rob Reiner in Misery (1990)

The When Harry Met Sally director makes a cameo in his psychological-horror film, Misery, about a psychotic fan (Kathy Bates) who holds an author (James Caan) captive and forces him to write her stories. Reiner plays a helicopter pilot helping the local sheriff Buster search for Paul’s car.

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Directors who have made cameos in films

Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver (1976)

The director makes cameo appearances in nearly every film he makes. But playing a twisted passenger in the taxi driven by Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) has to be one of his best. When the cab stops at an apartment, the silhouette of the passenger’s wife can be seen. He then describes to Bickle how he would like to kill the woman with a 44 Magnum pistol.

Columbia Pictures

Directors who have made cameos in films

Clint Eastwood in Breezy (1973)

He has directed himself in many of his films, including Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven, but Eastwood also gave himself a cameo role in his third film Breezy. In the romantic drama, starring William Holden and Kay Lenz, he can be seen briefly, leaning on a pier in a white jacket.

Getty

Directors who have made cameos in films

Roman Polanski in Chinatown (1974)

Roman Polanski’s cameo in Chinatown as “man with knife” is memorable. He slashes the nostril of leading man Jack Nicholson, who plays snooping detective Jake Gittes. Polanski pulls out the knife and says: “You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh, no? Want to guess? Huh, no? OK. They lose their noses.“

Paramount Pictures

Directors who have made cameos in films

Oliver Stone in Platoon (1986)

The director has a small cameo role in his film Platoon, as an officer at the US bunker which gets destroyed by a suicide bomber. It’s not the first time he has made appearances in his films: he was an investor in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and a UCLA film professor in his biographical film The Doors.

Directors who have made cameos in films

David Cronenberg in The Fly (1986)

Most of the director’s cameo roles are in other people’s films, including John Landis’s Into the Night and Gus van Sant’s To Die For. But he makes a brief appearance as an obstetrician delivering a giant larva in his film The Fly, after Martin Scorsese observed that he resembled a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Cronenberg delivers a maggot-baby to Geena Davis’s Veronica, the girlfriend of Jeff Goldblum’s scientist Seth Brundle.

Directors who have made cameos in films

George Lucas in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

After 28 years behind the camera, the Star Wars creator made his one and only cameo appearance in Revenge of the Sith, as Baron Papanoida, a blue-coloured alien statesman who appears in the opera house scene. He gave three of his children – Jett, Amanda and Katie Lucas – cameo roles in it, too.

Getty Images for AFI

Directors who have made cameos in films

Cameron Crowe in Minority Report (2002)

Cameron Crowe had already put Steven Spielberg in his film Vanilla Sky, so perhaps this was a return favour? Crowe can be seen as a passenger on a train, along with another extra, the actor Cameron Diaz.

Getty Images

Directors who have made cameos in films

Hal Ashby in Harold and Maude (1971)

The Shampoo director had several cameos in his films, including playing a passenger in a Porsche who is flashing a peace sign in Coming Home, his Oscar-nominated 1978 film. But in the darkly humourous love story Harold and Maude, in which Harold, a lonely teenager intrigued by death, has a romantic relationship with a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor, Maude, Ashby pops up as a bearded man watching model trains.

Saboteur Media/Rex

Directors who have made cameos in films

M Night Shyamalan in The Sixth Sense (1999)

M Night Shyamalan's parents are doctors, while the director considered becoming one as well. So it is perhaps no surprise that he cast himself as Dr Hill in his supernatural horror The Sixth Sense. He plays a psychiatrist who talks to young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) after he is locked inside a closet by bullies at a birthday party.

Getty Images

Directors who have made cameos in films

Todd Philips in Old School (2003)

The director has some creepy cameos in his films, including as a suspicious man in an elevator in The Hangover, and a man with a foot fetish in Road Trip. But he really comes into his own as “gang bang guy”, who turns up late to an orgy in Old School. When Luke Wilson’s character finds out his wife is into group sex, he opens the door to Philips who says: “I’m here for the gang bang.”

DreamWorks Pictures

Directors who have made cameos in films

David and Jerry Zucker in Airplane! (1980)

All three directors of this spoof aeroplane disaster movie make cameos in their film. The Zuckers play two distracted air traffic controllers who accidentally guide a jumbo 747 jet into the LAX airport terminal. Jim Abrahams turns up as one of the religious fanatics in the Chicago airport terminal.

Paramount/Rex

Directors who have made cameos in films

Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now (1979)

The director plays a TV news director, with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro playing the cameraman by his side, in his film Apocalypse Now. As they film mock news footage of the combat, Coppola shouts at Michael Sheen’s character Captain Benjamin L Willard, who is fighting in the Vietnam War: “Don't look at the camera! Just go by like you're fighting. Like you're fighting. Don't look at the camera! This is for television. Just go through, go through.”

Rex Features

Tubman suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was 12 years old, after a slave owner threw a heavy metal weight intended for another slave, but hit her instead. She started experiencing odd visions and hallucinations, which she interpreted as direct messages from God. Harriet interprets these premonitions far too literally, using them as a plot device to save the day over and over again, as though she’s an 1800s X-Men superhero.

There are a handful of interesting themes at play here, namely in Tubman’s interactions with black abolitionists William Still (Leslie Odom Jr) and Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monáe, whose character, unlike Still’s, is fictional). The former is averse to risk, since he’s fixated on maintaining the secrecy of the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses. The latter was born free and must learn to see the world through Tubman’s eyes. The film even touches on the collective trauma experienced by those who were enslaved.

But these all feel like mere inklings of the film that Harriet could have been. Hopefully the next project about her will take a deeper look.

Harriet is released in UK cinemas on 22 November

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