Emancipation

Emancipation is a story of resilience and survival against all odds, focusing on the violence and brutality of slavery. Starring Will Smith and directed by Antoine Fuqua, the film is based on the story of the man known as “Whipped Peter”, an escaped slave depicted in an 1863 photograph that became one of the most widely circulated pictures of slavery. The photograph was taken during a medical examination in Louisiana and shows the horrific scars on the man’s back caused by lashings. It was used by abolitionists to prove that slaves were not treated humanely, as some claimed.

Emancipation brings to life a partly reimagined version of Peter’s story. The protagonist (played by Smith) is enslaved on a plantation with his wife Dodienne (Charmaine Bingwa) and their children. When Peter is sold to another owner, his main goal becomes that of being reunited with his family. Forced into hard labour for the construction of a railroad track, one day he overhears the news that President Lincoln has abolished slavery. As his situation worsens, he decides to run towards his freedom and cross the swamps that divide him from the Baton Rouge military camp where he would be assisted. He spends ten days on the run, nursing wounds and fighting hunger as alligators and snakes roam around him, while men on horseback and savage dogs hunt him.

A survival story where every scene is designed to awaken sympathy and admiration towards the protagonist, it’s difficult not to see this as a Smith-centred project rather than a bona fide historical account. Even the grand scenes depicting the war seem placed there to achieve an epic film feeling rather than to get deeper into the story or any of the characters’ psyches. This is a production made in typical Hollywood style, in that it ticks all the boxes that a feature of this kind should. It’s effective in many ways because it applies tried-and-tested formulas, but it ultimately lacks soul.

The movie met with some criticism as to its motivation for showing the brutality and violence of slavery in such graphic ways. Fuqua and Smith (who is also a producer of the film) have responded that slavery is a crucial part of history and that Americans should not look away from it.

Mersa Auda

Emancipation is released on Apple TV+ on 9^th December 2022.

Watch the trailer for Emancipation here: