An essay I wrote on the film, Passage du milieu.
The title of this film is Passage du milieu which is literally defined as “The Middle Passage” in French. It was named this because it was the middle leg to a three-part voyage. The Middle Passage was the point where the Triangular Trade Route began exporting Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean Islands. The Triangular Trade Route started in Europe where they traded rum, molasses, textiles, guns and gun powder in exchange for slaves on Africa’s Guinea Coast. There were 30 slave traders who forced 300 to 600 Africans onto ships. Upon boarding, they were branded with the initials of the slave trade companies on the back of their necks and all their tribal jewelry was removed. What led up to this was Europeans invading African nations and forcing them into two groups: the skilled and the useless. The skilled served the king and were castrated or buried alive while the useless were taken onto the ships. Those who were taken suffered from malnutrition and starvation due to extreme rationing because of the 1 to 5 month trips depending on wind conditions, as well as heat and a multitude of diseases. The heat resulted in vomiting so along with the urination, defecation, and menstrual blood that blanketed the ships floors people started becoming ill. At the first sign of disease, Africans were tossed overboard dead or alive. Amoebic dysentery, small pox, and yellow fever were a few of the diseases that the slaves died from. Approximately 2.5 million to 8 million Africans died at sea but there are no official records to determine the exact number. Because of this large number of deaths, the Middle Passage is considered the “Atlantic Holocaust”.
The setting of the film was during the 1600s mainly in the Atlantic Ocean. The journey began from the Guinea Coast of Africa and ended on the United States East coast and the Caribbean Islands where the slaves were introduced to their new lives in bondage.
The film opens with a boy looking out at the ocean at daytime in a somewhat hopeful manner. It seems to demonstrate opportunity and advancement but is quickly overshadowed by the dark waters displayed during the credits. The almost blackness of the water expresses the negativity of the film yet to truly begin and of the dark history that has been glossed over. There is a violin playing an emotional tune for a sorrowful effect in order to further push the negative feelings into the viewer.
The concluding images are of a boy watching as a cruise ship leaves, possibly indicating that the journey is over. The excruciating pain of the Middle Passage is over except for the unknown land to which the enslaved are introduced. The ride to the “New World” for Africans was unbearable and once they escape that part of their suffering the journey is finished but there are even worse beginnings. These last images of the film also display the contrast of the trips of our ancestors and how people in modern times get on big cruise ships for entertainment. Millions of our ancestors died and endured incredibly devastating months packed tightly like sardines on a ship while being dehumanized and having their cultures stripped from them. Now these huge ships are purely for fun, a vacation, and an escape from the responsibilities and liabilities of daily life. The last few minutes of the movie are meant to depict the ending of one aspect of Africans’ unjust history and how the millions of slaves who jumped into the ocean, committing suicide, are calling for their stories to be heard above the modern use of vessels. The boy represents the African who was stolen from his home and can’t seem to reach or connect to his homeland. He is watching as people throw his ancestors’ history under the rug and disregard the damage done to every single generation following them. A large quantity of people in the United States negate the fact that African Americans only got to the Americas by force meaning many were murdered. The cruise ship symbolizes that erasure of the Middle Passage and the rest of the suffering created by the Triangular Trade Route which unlawfully lasted too long and immorally existed. The significance of the scene being at nighttime is for the film to insinuate the darkness that is yet to come as one chapter closes.
The point of view of this film is of the narrator, Djimon Hounsou, in the third person. Though the narrator uses the pronoun “I” when describing the experiences of the Africans as if he was literally there, his use is utilized for the purpose of personalizing the occurrence. The camera is used to show our ancestors staring directly into the lens in order to express the pain in their eyes. It is not often a good idea for a film to do that but the technique displays a powerful message and evokes intense emotions such as sorrow and frustration. To further dehumanize the Africans the narrator was the only person speaking throughout the film. The reason for this was to communicate the lack of individuality and to highlight the narrator’s death and his own story. Their voices were silenced and the language barrier initially withheld connection among the different tribes and the Europeans. We were forbidden of speaking our native tongue because culture is transmitted through language and the Europeans wanted to obliterate all African cultures.
On both sides and among every tribe there was a common experience: fear. Fear drove the white man to abuse and exploit his fellow human beings while it created a sense of unity between the different African tribes. Fear was a constant in the film which would disappear and reappear as the journey progressed. When the levels of fear were low in the slaves it culminated an uprising. The cycle was of hope to the loss of faith and then the regaining of faith but as days passed many Africans became hollow and depressed. They could not move, they did not eat, and the only reason they didn’t kill themselves like the others was because they didn’t have the mental or physical strength to do so. Those who did commit suicide knew that they didn’t have a life worth to live but they also did it to appease the angry gods who they believed were punishing the African people for doing something wrong. Because our ancestors believed that without a proper burial their souls are lost forever the narrator quotes that the Atlantic Ocean is, “haunted by bushy haired Africans reaching their chains to the sky,” to have their voices heard.
The first striking sequence was the scene with the beautiful African woman and a man in Africa. The man walks up to her and reaches out but as he gets closer she fades away. The scene depicts the slave and all his descendants attempting and failing at completely reconnecting with their roots. The woman represents Mother Africa who is calling her people home as close as they can get. Another image that struck me was the bodies floating underwater, some dead and some still alive. The water was very dark with only a small patch of light penetrating the surface from the sun and the dark-skinned bodies were disappearing slowly like their souls were gradually being forgotten at sea. The most dehumanizing event was the dumping of these bodies over and over and over again. The Africans were laid out on the deck on top of each other and were thrown into the ocean one after the other like trash and as if they weren’t even people with individual personalities. The beginning with the slave vomiting was striking because the boat was so unsanitary that people were getting sick quickly. There were rats crawling all over their bare, damp skin and cockroaches were swimming in their drinking water. The Africans had no chance at health in those horrid conditions and that was likely a factor that contributed to the detriment to their mental health. Additionally, when the Africans revolted they were shot and there was blood everywhere. This furthered their lack of sanitation and worsened what little well-being they had left. Even with them being forced to dance on the top deck to be humiliated by the Europeans, their muscle atrophy wasn’t all prevented as they had no space to stretch or comfort of a bed to support their bodies. What was truly awful was that eternal discomfort of being nude and wet with no nutrition and no efficient way to communicate with the other tribes. They were cold and wet which people try to avoid because we need warmth, dryness, and physical comfort.
The camera did some rocking like how a boat would sail on the water in the beginning of the film to evoke feelings of sea sickness and the illusion that the viewer is there too. It generated the realness of the ride during the Middle Passage, making us connect with our ancestors who endured that rocking feeling for months on end along with all the other horrors that came along with it. Another camera effect was the shaking during the scenes when the African tribes were being overthrown by Europeans. There was fire and the people fleeing were blurry as the camera shook and moved rapidly. This was to offer the effect of anxiety and fear because you can’t see exactly what’s happening but you know it’s not good as the narrator is telling the story over the scene.
The first repetition that I noticed was the ocean. It is probably the most significant repetition because it is also the setting of the majority of the film. The Atlantic Ocean is dark and vast and millions of African corpses are rotting at the bottom of it because somebody thought they had the right to take away another human being’s rights. The ocean is full of lost souls, untold history and silenced voices of the dead. While the Atlantic is a reminder of the death and despair that engulfed the lives of “useless” Africans, the repetition of the seagull flying above all symbolizes the liberty that was dreamt of and brought about hope in the hearts of our ancestors. The bird flew by every time there was a particularly harsh or devastating scene. It is meant to ease the viewer with the peaceful skies and the gliding of the bird in a difficult moment, a moment that seems to have lasted forever.
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