Amazing Grace
Directed by Michael Apted
Back in my more militant Black Studies classes, a standard argument held that Christianity was propaganda used to control black slaves, supposedly proven by the fact that a slave trader, John Newton, wrote the Christian anthem “Amazing Grace.” The new Michael Apted film Amazing Grace goes quite a way to repair that cynicism. Rather than tell how that great composition came to be, the film details how William Wilberforce, the Parliamentarian who led Britain’s abolitionist movement in the late 18th century, drew inspiration from the song.
When Wilberforce (played by Ioan Gruffudd) is elected to the House of Commons, the slavery issue tests the convictions of the government, a then-dominant world power. It is Wilberforce’s minister, the reformed John Newton (played by Albert Finney) who inspires the politician’s spiritual commitment. So the movie is about Wilberforce’s belief in amazing grace, belief that lenience comes from God and the compassion that mankind must show itself.
There’s a courageous sense of social propriety and cultural mission in Amazing Grace, backed-up by Apted’s tasteful intelligence. This journeyman British filmmaker occasionally shows the touch of artistry. More than a mere biopic, Apted’s film examines the phenomenon of Wilberforce’s personal conviction; it’s about the stirring of idealism in a world largely devoted to trade and power. What could be bolder than a film that insists upon virtue and dedication today—an age ruled by political distrust? Apted turns abstract concepts into grave, impassioned images, illuminating the script by Steven Knight whose globally-conscious Pretty Dirty Things became a tawdry, formulaic Stephen Frears film.
Note how Amazing Grace begins with a resonant act of violence: a workman whipping a horse that lies exhausted on a muddy road. The image of a whip on black flesh charges your senses and then Wilberforce steps forth; his character announcing moral intervention. Apted stays sensually focused on people going through emotional dilemmas, concentrating on the temperamental interactions of Wilberforce and Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai), his future wife; his strategizing with Prime Minister William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch); and his desperate counseling with the wizened John Newton (Finney—blind, remorseful, magnificent). Apted’s interest in these faces and atmosphere (moodily rendered by Remi Adefarasin who shot Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth) inscribes this moral drama into your consciousness. Against the notion that slaveholders were simply men of their unenlightened time, Wilberforce’s spiritual struggle challenges the precepts of his time and ours.
During a smoky clubhouse debate, Wilberforce rises and sings Newton’s song—a uniquely rousing moment. Like that unexpected scene in The Last Days of Disco where Matt Keeslar recites a hymn while courting Chloe Sevigny, it illustrates Christian faith as a personal background, an eccentricity in worldly circles. But it’s also a credible motivation. Wilberforce’s individual, brown-eyed strength charges that “Ships full of human souls sail around the world as cargo!” thus disrupting Parliament and changing history. (Link this scene to the glorious rectitude of the English captain blowing-up a slave prison in Amistad.) The song “Amazing Grace” becomes Wilberforce’s confession and pledge. Ioan Gruffudd sings it with virile passion, not the usual epicene piety. His youthful ardor makes faithfulness and reform go together.
Amazing Grace follows the enraptured historicism of Steven Spielberg’s Amistad and Terence Malick’s The New World, revisiting slavery as an institution of laws and investigating imperialism as a problematic spiritual quest. Apted evokes those master directors just as he evoked Bertolucci in Agatha. In fact, Amazing Grace was co-produced by Malick (it’s an addendum to his last opus just as the 1999 film Endurance complemented The Thin Red Line). With its enraptured images of nature and close views of Wilberforce and peers searching for salvation, Amazing Grace fills in the arcane poetry of The New World. Apted’s down-to-earth approach links Malick’s agape to the facts of history and to the hard lessons of slavery and law. For Malick, showing Wilberforce’s life and the human soul redeemed by faith and work might have been too blatant; however for Apted, it’s beautiful.
