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 following Napoleon's invasion of the country. Because his home country was a Portuguese colony, Amadeo knows the language and is able to strike up an unlikely friendship with Azin, a Moor with a supremely scientific mind. In Amadeo, the old man finds a kindred spirit, someone creative and curious about the world. Together with Azin's dog, they form a makeshift family in Azin's home, where they make all sorts of inventions and wonder about the ways the world works. It's a happy existence for Amadeo, a new home, a place where he can feel safe, far from the prying and judgmental eyes of the world.

But when Azin is invited to join a scientific expedition in Brazil, he jumps at the chance. Amadeo is nervous, but the lure of the New World is hard to resist. On the journey over, Amadeo meets the beautiful Linda, the daughter of a baron who has fallen on hard times. The hope is she can be wedded off to a wealthy man to save the family from impoverishment. Meanwhile, she's more interested in helping her family's slaves to stage a revolt and gain their freedom.

Once they land in Brazil, they go their separate ways. Linda returns to her home, while Amadeo ends up on an often surprising journey, crossing paths with pirates, artists, and other scientists. The film is very much about the various forces that shape our lives, and the way our lives, in turn, shape those forces. Science, art, history, politics...all of these serve as obstacles and tools in Amadeo's life as he navigates this new world and tries to understand how he can fit into it. As a Black man, he has to assess the way he moves through the world, and the relationships he forges. Though they spend most of the movie apart, Amadeo and Linda are clearly attracted to each other, but their love would be frowned upon by much of society (including, of course, Linda's family). As he travels with a troupe of artists, Amadeo dons white face paint to avoid catching the eye of pirates who are eager to capture and sell any Black people they come across. 

So Amadeo has to tread carefully even as his scientific prowess leads him to greater and greater heights. He is driven to figure out the mechanics of photography. He builds a makeshift camera obscura and then sets to work figuring out how to capture the image, the real image, to be preserved for history. Though he occupies a moment that is so unkind to and violent toward him, Amadeo wants to capture this moment, many moments, understanding how important that breakthrough could be for the scientific field that excludes him due to the color of his skin. He's a true scientist, passionate about his work, and luckily, he finds people who celebrate and want to work alongside him.

A big takeaway of the film is just that: navigating life is so much about finding people to live and work alongside. We all tell lies, and we all tell stories, and it's sometimes hard to tell what's true and what's not. But when you find people you can trust, people who uplift and support you, people you can have fun with, people you can bounce ideas off of...that's what it's all about. Here, characters find those connections despite differences of class, race, nationality, and vocation. They are pioneers in some ways, recognizing their shared humanity and trusting (hoping) that the world at large will catch up some day. In many regards, we're still anticipating that world and trying to bring it to fruition.

The characters, setting, and theme all really captured my imagination (as did the score, one of the best of the year!), and helped me to get invested in a story that isn't always particularly well-told. The film jumps back and forth between Amadeo's and Linda's stories, and it sometimes feels a bit arbitrary about when and where were being positioned. There's not a strong sense of flow between the two parts until they eventually converge again, at which point the film takes on a more confident narrative stride (similar to its early scenes). Despite the somewhat shaky storytelling, I still very much enjoyed my time with Amadeo and the Hypothetical New World. As I ruminate on it, and its mouthful of a title, I find myself hypothesizing how the world will continue to change, expand, and hold room for more diverse voices and minds. The arc of history is not always smooth, nor clear, but with brilliant minds, artistic souls, and open hearts, maybe it can at least bend toward justice, truth, and freedom.