An English Saint Gets The Story He Deserves

in

Amazing Grace

The New York Sun, February 22, 2007

"The Lives of Others," the compelling new movie about East Germany currently in contention for an Oscar, is the story of two flawed individuals' quest for moral redemption, but Michael Apted's "Amazing Grace" raises the bar far higher. It tells the tale of William Wilberforce, an unquestionably good man who set out to redeem the honor of an empire and, in so doing, saved millions of lives.

Born in England in the middle of the 18th century to a wealthy merchant family, Wilberforce (ably played here by Ioan Gruffudd) rose to prominence in a nation that had discovered the virtue of reason and the rewards of science but had lost some of its conscience along the way.

A little more than 200 years before, an appalled Queen Elizabeth I had reacted to the news of an early slaving expedition with the observation that it would bring the "vengeance of Heaven" in its wake. As usual, Heaven remained indifferent. The slave trade flourished and Elizabeth's successors were quick to take their share.

If God appeared unconcerned and most Englishmen were prepared to either avert their eyes from the evils of the Middle Passage or to profit from it, Wilberforce was undaunted, working tirelessly for two decades to secure the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Satisfyingly, he lived long enough to see Parliament strike down slavery itself in 1833.

With an exception or two, the filmmakers are honest enough about Wilberforce's rejection of slavery to make clear that the roots of his disdain for the trade lay not only in inherent goodness, but also in his deep-rooted Christianity. Unfortunately, this honesty does not extend to trusting moviegoers with a sufficiently rounded portrayal of that faith. The real Wilberforce was a man of immense charm, but many of his fellow Clapham "Saints" were a joyless bunch, and so opposed, for example, to the idea of a good night out at the theater that they might even have objected to a film as uplifting as this one.