Cringeworthy from beginning to end. Overly sexualized black bodies. The movie is all about the seductive, primal power the black women's bodies had over the white men. The black roles barely had any depth or character development. The black women are depicted as facile and oversexed. The black men are overly docile, stupidly superstitious, crazy-eyed angry and savagely violent.
Colonialism (which is essentially theft) is presented as a family business, not the systematic destruction of a country and its people. No one apologizes for it or reflects on it. The white characters are presented as fellow victims of circumstances, not willing participants in evil.
The narrative: Killian abandoned the civilized world to save her; the lighter-skinned (clearly mixed-race), and relatively chaste savage. Their love could only exist in a lawless, uncivilized underworld created by the bloodthirsty slave rebels. A tragic, cautionary tale. This is the same reinforced culturally separatist narrative routinely found in Spanish (and Portuguese) movies.
It's sad that these ill-considered movies are still being released in 2015. Thanks to the ongoing civil rights movement here in the U.S., modern filmmakers can't get away with this reckless narrative anymore.
Cinematography was beautiful, though.
Colonialism (which is essentially theft) is presented as a family business, not the systematic destruction of a country and its people. No one apologizes for it or reflects on it. The white characters are presented as fellow victims of circumstances, not willing participants in evil.
The narrative: Killian abandoned the civilized world to save her; the lighter-skinned (clearly mixed-race), and relatively chaste savage. Their love could only exist in a lawless, uncivilized underworld created by the bloodthirsty slave rebels. A tragic, cautionary tale. This is the same reinforced culturally separatist narrative routinely found in Spanish (and Portuguese) movies.
It's sad that these ill-considered movies are still being released in 2015. Thanks to the ongoing civil rights movement here in the U.S., modern filmmakers can't get away with this reckless narrative anymore.
Cinematography was beautiful, though.