Film Review: Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace is a film about a man of peace who changed the world. As a speech in the British Parliament suggests at the end of the movie, the world mainly honors men as great who achieved their greatness in war. Rare is the man of peace who achieved greatness and changed the world, not with armies, but with faith, passion, reasoned argument and, in the end, a little bit of political subterfuge. The man depicted is William Wilberforce, played by Iona Gruffudd, who ended the practice of slavery in the British Empire decades before it was ended in blood in the United States.

Just about everyone has heard the hymn Amazing Grace.

Amazing grace.
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me--

What many people do not know was that it was written by a preacher and former slave ship Captain named John Newton in the 18th Century. Newton came to realize that how he was making a living was so unimaginably evil that he underwent a kind of religious conversion which featured self loathing and repentence that was to last the rest of his life. As one of the main inspirations for Wilberforce's crusade, Newton is played by Albert Finney like a monk on the edge of madness out of not only guilt, but out of the knowledge that the evils he had participated in were still ongoing.

Wilberforce, as a young Parliamentarian, had his work cut out for him. The slave trade was emeshed in the British economy and many sincerely believed that its abolition would mean economic ruin. More to the point, the slave trade and sugar interests (sugar was the main slave tended crop in the British Empire) had most of the British Parliament in its pay.

All Wilberforce had on his side--at least at the beginning--was the faith that he was doing God's work and the knowledge that right was on his side.

Eventually, he acquires powerful allies. They include William Pitt the Younger, the great British Prime Minister played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Lord Charles James Fox, leader of the Opposition Whig Party, played by Michael Gambon. Still, his crusade against the slave trade was the work of decades and was overladen by periods of self doubt and loss of faith.