Harriet is a 2019 American biographical film directed by Kasi Lemmons, who also wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard. It stars Cynthia Erivo as abolitionist Harriet 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, and was a moderate commercial success, grossing $43 million worldwide against its production budget of $17 million. The film received several accolades and nominations, particularly for Erivo’s performance, which garnered her nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild. For the song “Stand Up,” Erivo and Joshuah Brian Campbell received Oscar, Grammy 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. Reverend Green finishes his sermon advising obedience to follow the Lord’s will.
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 describes 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. She decrees these scenes as visions from God and decides to run right before she’s to be taken to auction.
John offers to run with Minty, but she leaves him behind, fearing that he would lose his own freedom if caught escaping with her. She meets with her father on the way out, who tells her to go to Rev. Green for help with her journey. She worries, since he always says to be obedient to their masters, but goes anyway due to her father’s encouragement. When she meets with the Reverend he tells her what she must do to make it to freedom.
She travels all night but is pursued by dogs and four men on horseback. One of them is Gideon who manages to track her down. Gideon pursues her to a bridge over a river, where he appeals to her faith and even promises not to sell her. She jumps anyway, saying she will live free or die.
Minty is presumed drowned but successfully makes it to the blacksmith Rev. Green advised her to go to, Thomas Garrett. He takes her 25 miles from the Philadelphia border and she walks the rest of the way. She has now arrived in Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad, assisted by Quakers and other abolitionists.
In Philadelphia, she meets William Still, an abolitionist and writer. William encourages her to take a new free name, and she calls herself Harriet after her mother and Tubman to keep her husband’s name. After that, she tells William about her journey and childhood. He commends her for making it 100 miles on her own as this is rather unheard of. After she tells him God gives her visions of the future to prepare and advise her, he writes, “possible brain damage.” He does not tell her what he has written.
She also meets Marie Buchanon, the fashionable daughter of a freed slave who was born free and is now a boarding-house proprietor. She stays with her for the time-being. Marie also tells Harriet she can get word to her family that she made it to freedom.
After a year in Philadelphia, Harriet begs William to get his people to help bring her family over. He tells her getting slaves free has gotten much harder with slave owners, hunters, cities, and congress working together. William also tells her she needs to know how to read and demands she stays as she could reveal their organization. She then tells Marie who gives her a dress and gun for her trip. 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 talks to the Lord who shows her visions of her sisters then her escaping. He also shows future visions of her leading others to freedom right before her father meets with her. He tells her of others who wish to escape, and she decides to free the rest of her family. Except for her parents and sister who refuses to leave her two children.
The next day Gideon and the rest find out about their 5 slaves who ran off. He goes after Harriet’s sister who had just given birth threatening her kids. She reveals to Gideon that Harriet is still alive and came back for those who ran. Gideon makes it his mission to find the slaves and Harriet at all cost. They nearly capture them when God sends her more visions and advises Harriet on a safe path for them to take.
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. She notably loses nobody on her travels and each person tells their story to William Still. 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 then flees to Canada with help from her friends.
In Canada, Harriet learns her sister died. After meeting William once again, she insists that the Underground Railroad must continue. She continues to help runaway slaves flee all the way to Canada. She even receives a vision from God that her dad needs to be saved right before a previous helped slave reveals he worked for the Underground Railroad. Harriet then takes both her parents North.
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 who was about to kill Harriet. 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 leading an armed expedition of 150 black soldiers into the Combahee River Raid. There they free hundreds of slaves who rush into the river. Afterwards, she arrives back at her home surrounded by her loved ones.
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, and helped women’s suffrage. 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
Production
In 2015, Viola Davis was set to star in and produce a Harriet Tubman biopic; however, it never came to fruition. Development on a new film began in May 2016. In February 2017, Cynthia Erivo was cast as Tubman, with Seith Mann then set to direct, from a screenplay by Gregory Allen Howard.
Further development on the film was announced in September 2018, with Focus Features set as the new distributor, Kasi Lemmons attached as director, and Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, Jennifer Nettles, and Clarke Peters, and others, added to the cast. Lemmons received co-writer credit with Allen on the final script, and Allen also had the film’s “story by” credit. In October, Janelle Monáe was announced as one of several actors newly added to the film, with filming beginning on October 8, 2018 and lasting through December.
Harriet was filmed entirely in Virginia, in Richmond, Powhatan, Cumberland, Petersburg, and Mathews. Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County was used for Auburn, New York.
Release
Harriet had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. It was theatrically released in the United States on November 1, 2019. Its release for Blu-ray and DVD sales took place on January 14, 2020.
Reception
Box office
Harriet grossed $43.1 million in the United States and Canada and $200,000 in other territories for a worldwide total of $43.3 million, plus $4.2 million with home video sales, against a production budget of $17 million. In North America, the film was released alongside Terminator: Dark Fate, Arctic Dogs and Motherless Brooklyn, and was projected to gross $7–9 million from 2,059 theaters in its opening weekend. The film grossed $3.9 million on its first day, including $600,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to slightly over-perform, debuting to $11.7 million and finishing fourth. The film made $7.4 million in its second weekend, finishing sixth, and $4.6 million on its third, finishing tenth.
Critical response
Cynthia Erivo’s performance garnered critical acclaim and she received her first Academy Awards, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations for her performance.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 73% based on 222 reviews, with an average rating of 6.63/10. The website’s critics’ consensus reads, “Harriet serves as a sincere tribute to a pivotal figure in American history—albeit one undermined by its frustratingly formulaic approach.” Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews.” Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare grade of “A+,” while those at PostTrak gave it an average 4.5 out of 5 stars and a 69% “definite recommend.”
Reviewing for The New York Observer, Rex Reed wrote: “With enough terror to satisfy modern audiences and enough underplayed plot movement to save it from conventional biopic trajectory, Harriet holds interest and invites respect. It is still not the great Civil War epic it could have been, but it’s solid enough to work, and Cynthia Erivo’s valiant and committed performance is a wonderful achievement.” Richard Roeper gave the film three out of four stars in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, applauding Erivo’s “convincing” and “powerful” acting as well as Lemmons’ approach to the story. He wrote: “The crackling historical fiction frames harrowing rescue missions in fast-paced, quick-cut style.”
Some reviewers were less positive. Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film a “B–”, writing that “Harriet doesn’t attempt to reinvent the biopic, relying instead on a poignant turn by rising screen talent Cynthia Erivo as its soulful centerpiece, against the gorgeous backdrop of John Toll’s cinematography and Terence Blanchard’s euphoric score. As a sentimental tribute, it hardly transcends expectations—but Erivo’s performance injects a palpable urgency to the material that makes up for missed time.” In Variety, Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Cynthia Erivo plays the escaped slave Harriet Tubman with a mournful fury, but the rest of Kasi Lemmons’ biopic is more dutiful than inspired.”
Accolades
| List of Accolades | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Award / Film Festival | Year | Recipient | Nomination | Result |
| AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards | 2020 | Kasi Lemmons | Best Screenwriter | Nominated |
| Harriet | Best Time Capsule | Won | ||
| Academy Awards | 2020 | Cynthia Erivo | Best Actress | Nominated |
| “Stand Up” (by Joshuah Brian Campbell and Cynthia Erivo) | Best Original Song | Nominated | ||
| African-American Film Critics Association | 2019 | Harriet | ||