**SPOILERS**One can only be pleasantly surprised by this intelligent adaptation of the American classic, especially since UNCLE TOM'S CABIN is so widely and unjustly attacked, pilloried and distorted.
The novel's author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the daughter of the anti-slavery activist Henry Ward Beecher. The house in which she was raised was an Abolitionist nerve center: every character and every event in the novel is based on fact. Despite popular distortions, Stowe's title character is not at all remotely similar to what is commonly called an "uncle tom" (=an African American who sucks up to whites); he is a figure of towering dignity, one who takes his Christianity very seriously, who resists evil with all his being while rejecting hate and violence, who provides moral leadership for his enslaved neighbors, who is beaten senseless by his owner for refusing to flog a fellow slave and tortured fatally for not revealing the whereabouts of fugitive slaves. He is in fact proof that Martin Luther King's program of nonviolent resistance did not just derive from Gandhi but had roots in African-American culture. The portrayal of Tom in the film, by an almost unknown American actor, conveyed that brilliantly.
Before commenting on the other actors, one should note (as another reviewer at this site has already done) that there are some weird and not very well conceived changes in the plot. For example, I cannot guess why Eliza's desperate flight across the ice floes of the Ohio River (historically true, by the way) was not in the film; a proper portrayal could have rescued this scene from the stupid cliches to which it has been commonly reduced, and could make it fully as harrowing as it ought to be. Nor do I understand why Tom's death (in the film) is due to a fall from a wagon, rather than (as in the book)his torture by a sadistic master, maddened by Tom's goodness and determined to break him by making him betray his friends.
Be that as it may, the other characters are well acted also: Topsy, as in the book, is not the familiar "pixie" but (as in the book) near-autistic from neglect and abuse; Shelby is the deluded, weak liberal who congratulates himself for his kindness and magnanimity but is ready to rationalize selling Tom to pay a debt ("I'll buy him back someday"); Legree is the transplanted New Englander, hating himself for what he does, and sadistic like all those who spend their energy doing what they know they shouldn't, whose only companions are his likewise self-hating Black slave drivers and the slave girl of 15 whom he sexually abuses. All these portrayals are faithful to the novel.
I also congratulate the filmmakers on their correction of the book's one great flaw, namely the portrayal of the saintlike child Eva. Stowe pulled out far too many stops in drawing Eva: her mushy sermons and preternatural goody-goodiness is so cloying as to be embarrassing to the reader. In this film, all that crud is mercifully toned down, though she does remain (believably) a child wise and gentle beyond her years; and we all HAVE known at least one such child, have we not?
All in all, a most unexpectedly fine piece of cinema.
The novel's author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the daughter of the anti-slavery activist Henry Ward Beecher. The house in which she was raised was an Abolitionist nerve center: every character and every event in the novel is based on fact. Despite popular distortions, Stowe's title character is not at all remotely similar to what is commonly called an "uncle tom" (=an African American who sucks up to whites); he is a figure of towering dignity, one who takes his Christianity very seriously, who resists evil with all his being while rejecting hate and violence, who provides moral leadership for his enslaved neighbors, who is beaten senseless by his owner for refusing to flog a fellow slave and tortured fatally for not revealing the whereabouts of fugitive slaves. He is in fact proof that Martin Luther King's program of nonviolent resistance did not just derive from Gandhi but had roots in African-American culture. The portrayal of Tom in the film, by an almost unknown American actor, conveyed that brilliantly.
Before commenting on the other actors, one should note (as another reviewer at this site has already done) that there are some weird and not very well conceived changes in the plot. For example, I cannot guess why Eliza's desperate flight across the ice floes of the Ohio River (historically true, by the way) was not in the film; a proper portrayal could have rescued this scene from the stupid cliches to which it has been commonly reduced, and could make it fully as harrowing as it ought to be. Nor do I understand why Tom's death (in the film) is due to a fall from a wagon, rather than (as in the book)his torture by a sadistic master, maddened by Tom's goodness and determined to break him by making him betray his friends.
Be that as it may, the other characters are well acted also: Topsy, as in the book, is not the familiar "pixie" but (as in the book) near-autistic from neglect and abuse; Shelby is the deluded, weak liberal who congratulates himself for his kindness and magnanimity but is ready to rationalize selling Tom to pay a debt ("I'll buy him back someday"); Legree is the transplanted New Englander, hating himself for what he does, and sadistic like all those who spend their energy doing what they know they shouldn't, whose only companions are his likewise self-hating Black slave drivers and the slave girl of 15 whom he sexually abuses. All these portrayals are faithful to the novel.
I also congratulate the filmmakers on their correction of the book's one great flaw, namely the portrayal of the saintlike child Eva. Stowe pulled out far too many stops in drawing Eva: her mushy sermons and preternatural goody-goodiness is so cloying as to be embarrassing to the reader. In this film, all that crud is mercifully toned down, though she does remain (believably) a child wise and gentle beyond her years; and we all HAVE known at least one such child, have we not?
All in all, a most unexpectedly fine piece of cinema.