Review: Amadeo and the Hypothetical New World speaks to scientific minds and artistic souls
The wonderful Amadeo and the Hypothetical New World is dedicated by its filmmakers to their ancestors, on whose life and work their journeys are built. During the credits sequence, there's a voice that talks about freedom, the cost of it, that is always earned, never given. Freedom isn't free and, without struggle, it doesn't last. For being a film that has such weighty topics on its mind, and deals with them during its story, Amadeo is impressively light on its feet, and a very enjoyable watch. It strikes a perfect tone for grappling with the various forces at work against Amadeo, while never getting bogged down in misery or despair. Instead, it's a supremely hopeful film, one that uses its historical setting to look optimistically toward a better future, one we're (hopefully) living in, and continuing to build, today. Amadeo is a young African man who is taken from his village in Guinea-Bissau and forced into slavery in Portugal. There, his freedom comes suddenly ...
