“Belle”–Ringing for Justice
Of the many movies involving slave trade, films like “Belle”, “12 Years a Slave” and “Amistad” attempt to view the atrocities of slavery from the perspective of a slave or, in the case of Belle, an illegitimate daughter of a British nobleman, Admiral Sir John Lindsay (in a brief role by Matthew Goode). Inspired by a 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and her cousin Elizabeth Murray, the story looks into who Belle may have been, since few facts about her actually exist today.
In the film, Dido (“Belle”, played by the stunning...