The
critics have been rather unkind to Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace. The Observer
critic dismissed it as “like those earnestly worthy pre-war cinebiographies”.
I have two quarrels with that description: first, the use of “worthy” as
almost a term of abuse, when in fact it means “having worth”; secondly,
I cannot imagine that a 1930s moviegoer would have made much sense of the
film, so much has the language of cinema changed. Perhaps our critic would
have preferred a confusing multi-stranded offering with machine-gun editing.
It is not only films which like to draw attention to themselves that are
worth seeing.
Amazing Grace sets out
to be a straightforward telling of the story of William Wilberforce’s long
parliamentary campaign to abolish slavery in the British Empire, and within
the confines of a two-hour film it is largely successful. Handicapped by
illness and by doubts about his abilities, Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd)
is encouraged to continue the battle by his wife Barbara Spooner (Romola
Garai), his parliamentary colleague Henry Thornton (Nicholas Farrell),
the revolutionary Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell), the writer of the titular
hymn John Newton (Albert Finney), the converted master of a slave-ship,
and a group of other evangelical reformers known as the Clapham Sect. Discreet
support is also given by the party leaders William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch)
and Lord Charles Fox (Michael Gambon). Ranged against him are the massed
ranks of vested interests, such as Lord Tarleton (Ciaran Hands) and Toby
Jones (Duke of Clarence), presented as bewigged pantomime villains. There
is a single black character, the ex-slave Olaudah Equano (Youssou N‘Dour).
This roll-call of acting
talent, without the current fashion of having an American actor in a leading
British role, ensures that the performances are near-faultless. Strictly
speaking it is not a “British” film as it is US-financed, the great director
Terrence Malick being listed in the production team. The action rolls along
nicely, the scenes in the House of Commons being particularly enjoyable,
despite what seemed, to this reviewer, to be the anomaly of having members
of the House of Lords being present there.
The film has been criticised
by some as implying that the abolition of the slave trade (and eventually
of slavery) was largely due to the efforts of a single white man, with
slaves themselves never to be seen. This is to miss the point. Of course
there were slave uprisings which contributed to the abolitionist movement,
and a film about the whole history of that movement would have to give
prominence to those uprisings. But Amazing Grace was always intended to
be a conventional “biopic”, highlighting the life and work of a particular
individual.
This raises the whole
question of the merits of the “biopic”, which the critic quoted earlier
seems to look down upon. There are perhaps half-a-dozen of what can, to
a greater or lesser extent, be described as biopics among the canon of
greatest films: the silent classics Napoleon and The Passion of Joan of
Arc, the Russian classics Andrei Rublev and Ivan the Terrible, Lawrence
of Arabia, and Raging Bull. A film about William Wilberforce does not seem
amenable to the approach of any of these films: the events of Andrei Rublev
are largely fictional, the treatments of Napoleon, Joan, and Ivan are highly
expressionistic, Lawrence of Arabia would be a far lesser film without
the desert landscapes, while Scorsese has written that his treatment of
the boxer Jake la Motta was a means of finding his (Scorsese‘s) way out
of a personal crisis in his own life. To make a film about Wilberforce
in any of these ways would be absurd.
The one criticism which
can be made of Amazing Grace is that, like various other biopics such as
Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, it presents its hero as a man who can do
no wrong. The world is divided between “goodies” and “baddies”, and there
are no shades of grey. With that proviso, I would commend Amazing Grace
as an enjoyable, educational, and, dare I suggest, “earnestly worthy” film.
Alan
Pavelin
The
life and political career of an unlikely hero, William Wilberforce, a member
of the British Parliament in the 18th century who led a courageous twenty-year
campaign to abolish England’s participation in the African slave trade,
is dramatized in Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace. The title is derived from
the popular hymn whose words were written by John Newton, a former captain
of slave ships whose soul was redeemed by his faith. Wilberforce is played
by Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd who brings passion to the role of the sickly
leader who was on medication to relieve the symptoms of Colitis most of
his life, yet maintained a single-minded dedication to a cause despite
fierce opposition.
We see his wit and humor
in the Parliamentary debates on slavery, his struggles with his faith,
his friendship with the young Prime Minister William Pitt, and his romance
and marriage to activist Barbara Spooner who shares his dedication to abolition.
The film begins in 1797 as Wilberforce, then only 34, but worn out as a
result of his recurring defeats in Parliament, has gone to rest at the
home of friends Henry (Nicholas Farrell) and Marianne Thornton (Sylvestra
Le Touzel). There he meets the beautiful Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai)
and tells her the story of his life and work to abolish the slave trade.
The film then moves back in time to when Wilberforce was first elected
to the House of Commons in 1780 at the age of 21.
He is shown meditating
on the grass of his wealthy estate in conversation with his friend William
Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch), who eventually became the youngest Prime Minister
in Britain’s history at the age of 24. At the urging of Pitt, Wilberforce
puts together a Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade that began
gathering facts to present to Parliament and introduces his first bill
to abolish the slave trade in 1791, one of many bills he was to present
over the next twenty years. The members of the committee include Thomas
Clarkson, an evangelical Christian (called “the Jacobin by opponents),
Oloudagh Equiano (Youssou N’Dour), a freed slave and author of a book about
his experiences, and Lord Charles Fox (Michael Gambon), a pro-slavery advocate
who crosses over and joins the abolition campaign.
Though there is no actual
depiction of the brutality of the African slave trade, there is ample evidence
presented in debate. Going back to the Fifteenth century, the trade was
run for the benefit of merchants who transported European goods to Africa,
brought African men, women, and children as slaves to the West Indies who
were then sold and exchanged for West Indian exports. Chained together
in a cramped room the size of a closet, many died on the voyage which lasted
up to three months, and were thrown overboard. Once the weakest of the
slaves were abandoned on the wharf to die, the hardiest slaves were sent
to the cane fields to perform exhausting forced labor where many more died.
Clarkson collects 300,000 signatures on a petition favoring abolition in
which the signatories vow to refuse to use plantation sugar in their tea.
Another strong supporter
is John Newton portrayed by the great Albert Finney who persuades the shaky
Wilberforce to keep up the fight and not to give it up for a life in the
Church. The opposition to abolition, however, remains strong, led by Lord
Tarlton (Ciaran Hinds), and the Duke of Clarence (Toby Jones) who vow to
protect the economic benefits of slavery, even arguing that slaves live
more comfortably on the plantations than some Englishmen. Although Amazing
Grace is a conventional biography that does not venture into any new cinematic
territory, it is a very entertaining and inspiring film that captures the
period with authenticity and has a stellar cast that performs admirably
throughout.
Wilberforce does seem
slightly larger than life, yet he was a worthy hero who was admired by
Jefferson, Lincoln, and Thoreau. In spite of his physical limitations and
the overweening power of the ruling elite, he became a role model for those
afraid to stand for an unpopular cause. Despite the safety of dramatizing
events from two centuries ago, Amazing Grace shows us that political leaders
can also be individuals of moral conviction who are capable of leaving
the world in a better place than they found it.
GRADE: A-
Howard
Schumann
