Amazing Grace: The William Wilberforce Story
  Amazing Grace is based on the true story of William Wilburforce, a British statesman and reformer from the early part of the 19th century. He was instrumental in passing legislation to abolish slavery in the British colonies, a victory he won just three days before his death in 1833.
 

Amazing Grace - The William Wilberforce Story is directed by Michael Apted (James Bond: The World is Not Enough, Enigma). This 30 million dollar film (produced by Walden Media) also boasts an original screenplay written by Academy Award® nominee Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things).

There can be no doubt that this is a beautifully shot movie, with wonderfully observed performances throughout the entire cast. Albert Finney (Oceans Twelve, Erin Brockovich) as the guilt ridden John Newton is a tour de force and provides the film with much of its emotional gravitas. Michael Gambon (Sleepy Hollow, Harry Potter) is splendid as the shrewd parliamentarian Lord Charles Fox, and Ioan Gruffurd (Black Hawk Down, Fantastic 4).

    
 

This film is more of a biopic of William Wilberforce’s parliamentary life than it is a depiction of the actual ‘horrors’ of slavery or the slave trade. Amazing Grace never claims to be the ‘black equivalent’ to Speilberg’s ‘Schindler's List’. What it does is to focus on William and his abolitionist friend’s various attempts to get parliament to outlaw the slave trade and when this fails, to hit on an ingenious way of subverting the parliamentary machinery.  

At the heart of this film is an educational look at that political process and it deftly affects your intellect as well as your emotions as you are drawn into it.

 
 

I was surprised by just how much I was emotionally moved by this film since there is a significant absence of ‘grusome’ scenes feauturing slaves aboard overcrowded  ships, or slaves being subjugated in cotton / sugar plantations. 

However, just as in the infamous hit-cult movie ‘The Blair Witch Project’ the real horror is in the ‘monster’ that we do not see but is never-the-less always there and always referred to!  I believe that the decision not to show the ‘sufferings’ of the slaves, being beaten or brutalised was a brave editorial gamble and I think it actually works. 

  
 

There will be those within the black community and outside who’ll be politically less disposed to this film. They’ll be concerned that the film doesn’t highlight the black abolitionists sufficiently and that Youssou N' Dour’s role as Equiano is far too small. Then there’s the portrayal of white political activist Clarkson whose role many may well perceive as being less than generous. 

Never–the-less this did not stop the audience breaking out into spontaneous applause at the end of the film, when it was shown to a select and influential group of black leaders.

  
  What this film is, like any other historical movie, is as if looking through a tiny window which is covered in dirt. You cannot expect it to tell everyone’s story. Its aim is to tell Wilberforce’s parliamentary quest in the abolition of the transporatation of slaves in British ships and based on that criteria – it does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a soft introduction to a potential minefield.

“At last a film about the trans-atlantic slave trade that I can show my nieces and nephews without traumatising them” as one attendee put it.

  
 

I do think you can actually be moved quite profoundly by this beautifully shot and marvellously acted film, if you except it for what it is and not resent it for what it never claims or sets out to be.

Review by Roxanne Myles

 

  
 

 
 
     
 
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