Basic Info / 基本情報

English	日本語
Director	Steven Spielberg / スティーヴン・スピルバーグ
Year	1997
Running Time	155 min (2h 35m)
Genre	Historical Drama / 歴史ドラマ
Production	DreamWorks Pictures, HBO Pictures
Box Office	$44.2 million (Worldwide)

Synopsis / あらすじ

[English / 英語] In the early summer of 1839, a group of Mende people, led by a rice farmer named Sengbe Pieh (Djimon Hounsou), found themselves adrift in a world that sought to claim them as property. After a desperate struggle for their lives aboard the Spanish ship La Amistad, they arrived on the unfamiliar shores of America, only to be caught in a complex legal web that would test the very heart of the nation. With the gentle but firm guidance of supporters like former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), their plea for home transformed into a profound conversation about what it means to be human. The film softly asks: Can the simple, honest yearning for home find its way through the cold corridors of the law? In the quiet moments between the echoes of history, how do we hear the voices of those who were lost? and above all, does the light of “human dignity” eventually find its way through even the longest, darkest night?

[日本語] 1833年の初夏。メンデ族の米農家シンケ（ジャイモン・フンスー）をはじめとする人々は、自分たちを「所有物」として扱う理不尽な世界の中で、波間に揺られていました。スペインの船アミスタッド号での必死の抵抗の末、彼らが辿り着いたのは、見知らぬ異国アメリカの海岸。そこには、国家のあり方を問うような、複雑で長い法廷の道のりが待っていました。元大統領ジョン・クインシー・アダムス（アンソニー・ホプキンス）ら支援者たちの、穏やかで力強い導きを得て、彼らの「故郷へ帰りたい」という切実な願いは、やがて「人間とは何か」という深い問いかけへと変わっていきます。映画は静かに語りかけます。故郷を想うひたむきな祈りは、冷徹な法の迷宮を通り抜けることができるのでしょうか。歴史の波音の合間に、私たちは失われた人々の声をどのように聴き取ればよいのでしょう。そして、どんなに長く暗い夜であっても、「人間の尊厳」という光は、いつか必ず朝を連れてきてくれるのでしょうか。

Cast & Crew / スタッフ・出演

Role	English	日本語
Director / 監督	Steven Spielberg	スティーヴン・スピルバーグ
Screenplay / 脚本	David Franzoni	デヴィッド・フランゾーニ
Producer / プロデューサー	Steven Spielberg, Debbie Allen, Colin Wilson	スティーヴン・スピルバーグ、デビー・アレン、コリン・ウィルソン
Cinematography / 撮影	Janusz Kamiński	ヤヌス・カミンスキー
Music / 音楽	John Williams	ジョン・ウィリアムズ
Editing / 編集	Michael Kahn	マイケル・カーン
Production Design	Rick Carter	リック・カーター
Distribution / 配給	DreamWorks Pictures (US)	ドリームワークス・ピクチャーズ（米国）
Cast / 出演	Djimon Hounsou (Sengbe Pieh / Joseph Cinqué)	ジャイモン・フンスー（スィンゴウベ・ピエ / ジョセフ・シンケ）
	Anthony Hopkins (John Quincy Adams)	アンソニー・ホプキンス（ジョン・クインシー・アダムズ）
	Matthew McConaughey (Roger Sherman Baldwin)	マシュー・マコノヒー（ロジャー・シャーマン・ボールドウィン）
	Morgan Freeman (Theodore Joadson)	モーガン・フリーマン（セオドア・ジョードソン）
	Nigel Hawthorne (President Martin Van Buren)	ナイジェル・ホーソーン（マーティン・ヴァン・ビューレン大統領）
	David Paymer (Secretary Forsyth)	デイヴィッド・ペイマー（フォーサイス長官）
	Pete Postlethwaite (Holabird)	ピート・ポスルスウェイト（ホラバード）
	Stellan Skarsgård (Lewis Tappan)	ステラン・スカルスガルド（ルイス・タッパン）
	Chiwetel Ejiofor (James Covey)	チュウェテル・エジオフォー（ジェームズ・コーヴィー）
	Anna Paquin (Queen Isabella II)	アナ・パキン（イザベル2世女王）

Additional Information / 追加情報

Awards / 受賞歴

• 70th Academy Awards (1998) – 4 nominations:
  • Best Supporting Actor – nomination (Anthony Hopkins)
  • Best Cinematography – nomination (Janusz Kamiński)
  • Best Costume Design – nomination
  • Best Original Dramatic Score – nomination (John Williams)
• 55th Golden Globe Awards (1998) – 2 nominations:
  • Best Motion Picture – Drama – nomination
  • Best Supporting Actor – nomination (Anthony Hopkins)
• 51st BAFTA Awards (1998) – 2 nominations:
  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role – nomination (Anthony Hopkins)
  • Best Cinematography – nomination (Janusz Kamiński)
• Screen Actors Guild Awards (1998) – 1 nomination:
  • Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role – nomination (Anthony Hopkins)
• NAACP Image Awards (1998) – 2 wins:
  • Outstanding Motion Picture – WON
  • Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture – WON (Djimon Hounsou)

Critical Reception / 批評的評価

• Rotten Tomatoes: 77% (Critics), 83% (Audience)
• Metacritic: 63/100 (Generally Favorable Reviews)
• IMDb: 7.3/10
• Eiga.com（映画.com）: 3.8/5
• Djimon Hounsou’s performance universally acclaimed — his physical and emotional presence described as overwhelming, particularly given that he performs almost entirely without English dialogue for the first half of the film
• Anthony Hopkins’s monologue as John Quincy Adams called one of the finest pieces of screen acting of the decade
• Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography — particularly the harrowing recreation of the Middle Passage — praised as visually precise and morally unflinching
• Debbie Allen, who produced the film after a decade of fighting to bring the story to screen, widely credited for making the film possible
• Roger Ebert.com: ★★★★ “A powerful and important film — Spielberg at his most serious”
• The New York Times: “Ambitious, often magnificent, occasionally unwieldy”
• Variety: “A film of genuine moral weight”
• The Guardian: ★★★★ “Hounsou commands the screen with extraordinary authority”
• Some critics argued the film centers white legal advocates (Baldwin, Adams) rather than the Africans themselves — a structural tension the film is aware of but does not fully resolve
• The Middle Passage sequence — Africans chained below deck, drowned when the ship takes on water — considered among the most viscerally devastating depictions of the slave trade ever filmed
• Chiwetel Ejiofor appears in a small role as translator James Covey — one of his earliest film appearances
• Compared unfavorably by some to Beloved (1998, Jonathan Demme), released the same year, for its handling of interiority and Black subjectivity
• Widely used in American history and law school curricula

Box Office Performance / 興行成績

• Worldwide Total: $44.2 million
• Domestic (US/Canada): $44.2 million (virtually no international release)
• Production Budget: $36 million
• Return on Investment: 1.2x (modest theatrical; strong ancillary)
• Opening Weekend (US):
  • Wide release: December 12, 1997
  • $8.7 million opening weekend (#2)
  • 1,148 theaters
• Performance Analysis:
  • Released two weeks after Titanic (December 19, 1997) — competing for holiday audiences in an extraordinarily difficult market
  • Titanic effectively dominated the awards conversation and box office through spring 1998
  • Amistad‘s modest domestic performance ($44M against $36M budget) considered a disappointment relative to Spielberg’s commercial standing
  • The film’s subject matter — the transatlantic slave trade, antebellum American legal history — limited its international commercial reach
  • Strong ancillary performance: home video, television, educational licensing
  • Widely adopted in schools and universities as a teaching tool
• Debbie Allen’s Role:
  • Producer Allen — dancer, choreographer, actress — spent ten years attempting to get the film made
  • Her persistence was the primary reason the film exists
  • One of the most significant behind-the-scenes stories of 1990s Hollywood
• Comparison:
  • Schindler’s List (1993, Spielberg): $321M worldwide — Spielberg’s previous historical atrocity film, made for $22M
  • Amistad (1997): $44M worldwide — similar moral seriousness, far smaller audience
  • Lincoln (2012, Spielberg): $275M worldwide — Spielberg returned to American slavery and the law fifteen years later to far greater commercial success

Related Review / 関連レビュー

🔗 English Review
・[International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade] To Name It a Crime—Amistad and the Long Argument Against Human Property

🔗 日本語レビュー
・【奴隷制度・大西洋奴隷貿易犠牲者追悼国際デー】それを犯罪と呼ぶこと——『アミスタッド』と人間を財産とすることへの長い反論