French TV's Toussaint Louverture Goes Awry

France 2's two-part, three-hour production of "Toussaint Louverture" should have been the fulfillment of a dream. For decades, black actors and producers have unsuccessfully sought funds to tell the story on screen of the great man who defeated the most powerful armies of the world and set the stage for Haitian independence. But Hollywood has never warmed to the idea that the tale of the black man who led the world's only successful slave revolt would be box office dynamite.

The French TV network's production, directed by French director Philippe Niang, is lavish, with authentic-looking sets, colorful costumes and great attention to historical detail. The producers gathered a stellar cast, led by Haitian-American Jimmy Jean-Louis, whom most Americans would remember as "The Haitian" in NBC's sci-fi series, "Heroes." Other performers include the beautiful Aïssa Maiga as Toussaint’s wife Suzanne, and former Miss France Sonia Rolland as the mulatto wife of French abolitionist Sonthonax. The actors speak French and Creole (which is subtitled).

The plot generally follows the historical facts, except for a few jarring side trips. There is Toussaint's gradual political awakening, the famed Bois Cayman voodoo ceremony that started the slave revolt. There is the intrigue and mistrust between blacks and mulattos and Louverture's masterful maneuvering of French, British and Spanish forces. And finally, there is Toussaint's betrayal by Napoleon and his imprisonment in the Chateaux de Joux in the Jura mountains where he finally dies. It will remain to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of his more ruthless deputies, to take the step toward independence in 1804.

The plot goes awry when the writers invent facts that seem gratuitous. At the beginning, when Toussaint and his sister are on the auction block, a buyer deems his father too old and has him drowned. In fact, Toussaint's father outlived him. In the famous Bois Cayman ceremony, Biassou, an early leader of the slave uprising, tries to shoot Toussaint but the gun fails to fire. There's no evidence Toussaint was at Bois Cayman. In another scene near the end, his faithful valet Mars Plaisir, who accompanied Toussaint to prison when Napoleon tricked him into accepting an invitation to France, played wonderfully by Magloire Delcros-Varaud, is shot by a French general on leaving the prison. Plaisir was sent in chains to Nantes, but eventually was released and died peacefully in Paris 20 years later.

These script aberrations suggest the authors don't trust the integrity of the real story to hold an audience. Maybe they are aware of the shortcomings of their script. Some of this film plays like a school pageant, flat, two-dimensional, and clichéd. One one hand, it is exciting to finally see some of our nearly forgotten history brought to life for a large audience; on the other, it's disappointing once again that the characters never achieve the humanity that would make a truly great film.