Why <em>Harriet</em> Is Really a ‘Freedom Movie’

Sims: You made another biographical film that I love, Talk to Me, in 2007. Did you learn anything about the biopic genre there that helped inform Harriet?

Lemmons: Find out who the [subject of the movie] loved. Because who the person loved is the story, to me. It’s what they did, but it can’t just be a catalog of what they did. When you find the character’s passions and who they loved and trusted, and didn’t trust, that’s where you find the real story. In both films, I appreciate the decision to not try and do a cradle-to-grave biography. Both films examine a certain period of time that brings the whole [character] into view.

Sims: With Harriet, you’ve zeroed in more on the earlier part of Tubman’s life.

Lemmons: I was trying to include her family especially. There’s something very abstract about Harriet Tubman, even though we learn about her in school. We think of this old woman in a chair, we’re told of her heroic acts, but it’s abstract to us. What’s not abstract is what we’d do for our families, and that’s really her story. It makes her story more accessible—her love for her family and her wanting them to be free, as well as herself.

Sims: The first part of the movie is about her escaping on her own and how arduous her journey was. You make it feel impossible that she could ever do it again; it feels like such a miracle that she manages to do it at all. So the idea of her wanting to go back is frightening.

Lemmons: It’s tremendously frightening, and she did that 13 times. She’d go back in the wintertime, when the nights were longest. So it’d be cold, there was incredible danger, and she did it again and again and again. It was her job.

Sims: Were there any specific films that you thought of as an inspiration?

Lemmons: Not really, no. I felt that there wasn’t really a good comp.

Sims: That’s what interests me.

Lemmons: [Harriet] was genre-busting: People would ask me [to describe it], and I’d say, “Well, it’s 12 Years a Slave meets Django Unchained meets Wonder Woman.”

Sims: Because movies like 12 Years a Slave are steeped in how dehumanizing slavery is, and while that’s a part of the story you’re telling, it’s just a part.

Lemmons: Right. If I asked you to tell me what the story of Harriet Tubman was about, you’d say, “Well, she escaped to freedom, and then she went back to liberate others.” So I really focused on those words—it’s a freedom movie; it’s not a slavery movie. It exists in a very perilous and conflicted time in our country, but it’s really about freedom and what you’re willing to do for it—not just for you, but for others. To live free or die is a very powerful concept; Tubman says it over and over again. My favorite quote of hers is, “I prayed to God to make me strong enough to fight.” That’s super interesting for the time we live in—there’s so much that we have to pray to be strong enough to fight for.

David Sims is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers culture.