Director Kasi Lemmons wasn’t looking to film just another movie about slavery. In Harriet, the moxie-filled heroic journey of of Harriet Tubman who escaped slavery and left a mark on history books, Lemmons instead directs a tale of freedom, liberation, and survival…instead of shackles.
Cynthia Erivo (Widows, Bad Times at the El Royale) portrays Tubman, the woman who became known as the “Moses” to her people by leading others to freedom. Erivo does for Harriet what Lupita Nyong’o did for Twelve Years a Slave… bringing poignancy and pain to a role at the time of the Civil War and long after.
Yet, the film has a strong resonance to today’s Mexican border scenario. As we watch Tubman escape her Master on a Maryland Plantation, circa 1849, after her mother was promised a now denied freedom, and she’s told that she and her husband can’t raise their unborn children as ‘free’ citizens, Harriet will “be free or die.” Harriet, only equipped with a long leather strap and a one foot knife, stops at nothing – surviving shotgun chases, near drowning and near starvation – to make it to ‘Philadelphia freedom.’ Fear is her only enemy and she refuses to ever face it. Instead it is God that guides her to safety.
It is here that her story begins a year later, following her 100 foot journey. It is here that she challenges with tenacity the powers-that-be in order to help others be freed and change the course of history.
Lemmons directs with ferocity this tale of a willful woman who deserves more than just her face on a postage stamp. Lemmons honors Harriet Tubman, much as she did with the character of ‘Eve’ in her previous critically acclaimed Eve’s Bayou back in the late 90s. Lemmons has created a career of moving through the ghosts of southern families with heart and soul and a true spirit. 3 ½ tiaras