Amend: The Fight for America - review

Constitutional law history is perhaps not the first thought that comes to mind as a vector of emotion and excitement. It is, in fact, probably likely to be the opposite.

Amend: The Fight for America (now on Netflix), fronted and produced by actor Will Smith, is a sweeping journey through 150 years of legal and social US history that tells how the oddly unloved 14th Amendment of the US Constitution came into being, and what the repercussions of this fundamental piece of legislation have been and continue to be during that time.

The amendment, with the likely unwittingly inclusive nature of its language, creates a promise of justice and fair treatment from the state to its citizens and visitors. And, from giving the newly emancipated slaves a place in US society to women's rights, allowing same-sex marriage and beyond, it has underpinned the major advances in US civil rights since its inclusion to the constitution in 1868.

The six-part documentary brushes the portrait of the fights US citizens have had to put up against what is revealed as an intrinsically white supremacist patriarchy to try and force it to make that promise true.

Along the way, we are introduced to a gallery of well-known "angelic troublemakers", as Bayard Rustin called them, and a number of much less well-known one. We are also confronted with truly despicable, and sometimes jaw-dropping, acts of oppression against minorities by the country that claims to be the Land of the Free.

In addition to legal talking heads, and, in the later episodes, actual civl rights activists, Smith has enrolled a number of his famous actor friends to declaim the words of the historical figures mentioned by the show.

The production boasts lush aesthetics and visual effects devised to compensate for the lack of film footage for most of the period covered.

Unfortunately, there is a certain lack of consistency in the visual devices the show uses, which mars the overall effect. There is also a tendency to move away too quickly from text-based material, preventing proper scrutiny, and some of the contextual explanations can be a little rushed and superficial at times.

Nevertheless, the show, which goes all the way to Trump and his attempts against the Dreamers, provides a stunning and often moving overview of a country in denial, one that hypocritically fails to live up its own principles and promise. It thankfully ends of a hopeful note, going out of its way to make the point that the seeds of a truly inclusive and equal society are waiting in the 14th Amendment, ready to be warmed into life, not by the courts, but by the will of "We, the People". Let's hope they are right.