The Imperfect Soul Who Helped Bring an End to the Slave Trade (NYT Review/Amazing Grace)
“Amazing Grace,” a prettified take on the life and times of the 18th-century reformer William Wilberforce, carries a strong whiff of piety. It isn’t a bad smell; there are notes of roses and treacle in the mix, but also elements of sweat and pain. Wilberforce, born in 1759, was an abolitionist for much of his adult life and helped bring about the end of the slave trade in the British Empire and then slavery itself. He was an evangelical Christian and social conservative who rallied for animal rights and against trade unions, which makes him a tough nut to crack. It’s no wonder he makes a first-rate movie saint.
Serious-minded and squeaky clean, “Amazing Grace” is an imperfect look at an imperfect soul. It has been confidently directed by Michael Apted, who invests Wilberforce’s fight with a strong sense of conviction, and written by Steven Knight, whose other credits include “Dirty Pretty Things.” The overall effect is part BBC-style biography, part Hollywood-like hagiography, and generally pleasing and often moving, even when the story wobbles off the historical rails or becomes bogged down in dopey romance. Wilberforce often comes across as too good to be true, which may be why the fine Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, doubtless with the encouragement of his socially minded director, plays him with a hint of madness in his eyes....
... In some quarters, “Amazing Grace” will succeed better as a diversion than as a nuanced record of Wilberforce’s life. Historians have been divided on his legacy, with one damning him as “the mouthpiece of the party of order and of the business world.” A contemporary asked Wilberforce, after he introduced a law that set back the cause of trade unions, why he paid more attention to African slaves than to Britain’s working poor, whose interests he probably helped obstruct for years. Religious writers, not surprisingly, are more charitably disposed toward him....
Read entire article at NYT
Serious-minded and squeaky clean, “Amazing Grace” is an imperfect look at an imperfect soul. It has been confidently directed by Michael Apted, who invests Wilberforce’s fight with a strong sense of conviction, and written by Steven Knight, whose other credits include “Dirty Pretty Things.” The overall effect is part BBC-style biography, part Hollywood-like hagiography, and generally pleasing and often moving, even when the story wobbles off the historical rails or becomes bogged down in dopey romance. Wilberforce often comes across as too good to be true, which may be why the fine Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, doubtless with the encouragement of his socially minded director, plays him with a hint of madness in his eyes....
... In some quarters, “Amazing Grace” will succeed better as a diversion than as a nuanced record of Wilberforce’s life. Historians have been divided on his legacy, with one damning him as “the mouthpiece of the party of order and of the business world.” A contemporary asked Wilberforce, after he introduced a law that set back the cause of trade unions, why he paid more attention to African slaves than to Britain’s working poor, whose interests he probably helped obstruct for years. Religious writers, not surprisingly, are more charitably disposed toward him....