Harriet Dvd

Harriet is a 2019 American biographical film about abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Directed by Kasi Lemmons, who wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard, it stars Cynthia Erivo as Tubman, with Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, and Janelle Monáe in supporting roles.

A biography about Harriet Tubman had been in the works for years, with several actresses, including Viola Davis, rumored to star. Erivo was cast in February 2017, and much of the cast and crew joined the following year. Filming took place in Virginia from October to December 2018.

Harriet had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 1, 2019, by Focus Features. It received generally favorable reviews from critics, who praised Erivo’s performance and found the film sincere but formulaic. For her performance in the film, Erivo received nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild. For writing the song, “Stand Up,” Erivo and Joshuah Brian Campbell received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.

Plot

The film opens in 1840s Maryland, a slave state, Araminta “Minty” Ross is newly married to a freedman, John Tubman. Minty is still a slave herself on the Brodess farm, along with her mother and sister, while two other sisters had been sold to another slave owner in the South. Her father, also a freedman, approaches Mr. Brodess with evidence that Brodess’ ancestor had agreed to free Minty’s mother, Harriet “Rit” Ross, when she was 45, and that she and her children legally should have been free since Rit turned 45 twelve years before. Mr. Brodess insists they will always be slaves, and tears up the letter from the lawyer who had analyzed the will. In despair, Minty prays for God to take away Mr. Brodess, whom she decries as evil. Brodess’s adult son Gideon finds Minty praying, and castigates her, saying God does not care about the prayers of slaves. Mr. Brodess dies shortly afterward, and Gideon offers Minty for sale. Minty, who suffers “spells” since being struck in the head as a girl, has a vision of herself escaping to freedom, and she decides to run.

John offers to run with Minty, but she leaves him behind, fearing that he would lose his own freedom if caught escaping with her. Gideon pursues her to a bridge over a river, where he promises not to sell her, but she jumps anyway, saying she will live free or die. Minty is presumed drowned but successfully makes it to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad, assisted by Quakers and other abolitionists. In Philadelphia, she meets Marie Buchanon, the fashionable daughter of a freed slave who was born free and is now a boarding-house proprietor, and William Still, an abolitionist and writer. William encourages her to take a new free name, and she calls herself Harriet after her mother. After a few months in Philadelphia, against the advice of Marie and William, Harriet decides to go back for John. She successfully makes it to John’s homestead only to find he has remarried, believing she was dead, and is expecting a baby with his new wife.

Devastated, Harriet decides to free her family, but her sister refuses to leave her two children. Harriet continues to return, guiding dozens of slaves to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and a myth begins to grow about the person responsible, who is dubbed Moses. However, when the Fugitive Slave Act passes, the escaped slaves are in jeopardy of being brought back even from free states. Gideon is livid when he discovers that she is “Moses,” especially as his fellow slave owners demand he compensate them for Harriet freeing their own slaves. Gideon pursues her to Philadelphia along with the slave hunter Bigger Long, who kills Marie. Harriet flees to Canada.

In Canada, Harriet insists that the Underground Railroad must continue. She continues to help runaway slaves flee all the way to Canada, though her sister dies before she can save her. Over time, the Brodess farm falls into financial ruin. Mrs. Brodess vows to catch Harriet, using her sister’s children as bait, but Harriet’s team overwhelms Gideon’s siblings and retrieves the last remaining Brodess slaves. In a final confrontation, Gideon shoots Bigger Long to death, but then Harriet traps him. She lets Gideon live, prophesying that he would die on that battlefield, fighting for the “Lost Cause” and the sin of slavery. Telling him that her people would be free, she takes his horse and rides away.

In the last scenes of the film, Harriet is seen caring for her family, and leading 150 black soldiers into the Combahee River Raid, freeing hundreds of slaves.

An epilogue at the end of the film describes some of her accomplishments: She personally freed more than 70 slaves on the Underground Railroad and returned as a Union spy during the Civil War, leading 150 black soldiers, who freed over 750 slaves. She died at the approximate age of 91 and her last words were “I go to prepare a place for you”.

Cast

Cynthia Erivo as Araminta “Minty” Ross / Harriet Tubman
Leslie Odom Jr. as William Still, a Philadelphia abolitionist who connects Harriet with the Underground Railroad
Joe Alwyn as Gideon Brodess, Harriet’s former owner
Clarke Peters as Ben Ross, Harriet’s father
Vanessa Bell Calloway as Rit Ross, Harriet’s mother
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Reverend Samuel Green, a secretly-abolitionist freedman
Jennifer Nettles as Eliza Brodess, Gideon’s mother
Janelle Monáe as Marie Buchanon, the owner of a boarding house in Philadelphia who befriends Harriet
Omar Dorsey as Bigger Long, a notorious black slave-catcher
Tim Guinee as abolitionist Thomas Garrett
Zackary Momoh as John Tubman, a freedman who’s Harriet’s first husband
Deborah Olayinka Ayorinde as Rachel Ross, Harriet’s sister
Henry Hunter Hall as Walter, a black slave-tracker who eventually switches to Harriet’s side
Rakeem Laws as Jasper Marley, the captain of the ship that helps the Underground Railroad
Nick Basta as Foxx, the Brodess Farm’s rancher
Tory Kittles as abolitionist Frederick Douglass
William L. Thomas as abolitionist U.S. Senator Seward