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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Amazing Grace: The triumph of a forgotten battle
Thursday 22 March @ 12:16:39 |
 by PAUL BACHLEITNER
The few Americans aware of William Wilberforce might associate the name with a private African-American college in Ohio or one of a vague array of civil rights personages who merit only a one- or two-sentence footnote in a high school social studies text. Fewer still might identify what he did, the continent on which he lived, or when he lived.
So the makers of a biopic about William Wilberforce wisely titled their film "Amazing Grace," after the church hymn many Americans can sing by heart. As it turns out, the man was the parliamentary champion of the movement to abolish slavery in England during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was also an evangelical Christian who happened to have as a mentor one John Newton, the writer of the aforementioned church hymn.
British director Michael Apted ("The World Is Not Enough," "Coal Miner's Daughter") helms the film with straightforward production values so British it's shocking to learn the BBC was not one of the underwriters. Only the plot device of an elliptical storyline adds complexity to the narrative. This is not necessarily a weakness. Informing viewers of Wilberforce and the British abolition movement is a complex enough task, and Apted tackles it in workman-like fashion.
We first meet Wilberforce riding in the back of a carriage, pale and haggard from the effects of a severe colitis outbreak that will force him to the ground in pain at several junctures later in the film. The actor playing Wilberforce is a virtual unknown, Ioan Gruffudd, possibly familiar to American audiences for his work as the super-pliant Reed Richards from the "Fantastic Four" comic book franchise (soon to launch a sequel this summer). But dark, svelte Gruffudd imparts a demure charisma to Wilberforce that speaks to the humanism of the character, even if it is of the "noble hero" variety commonly associated with the British upper class.
In short order, Wilberforce meets Barabara Spooner, an intellectual socialite whom he marries after only a few weeks of courtship. Wilberforce falls in love with her brain as much as her fiery red-headed good looks (at least as played by Romola Garai, "Vanity Fair"). The two have all-night conversations about their politically liberal ideals, which include discussion of Wilberforce's failed efforts to pass legislation through the House of Commons banning slavery in England. These conversations lead the plot backwards 15 years in time to the moment when Wilberforce first became inspired to join the abolition movement.
Although these flashbacks are slightly awkward plot devices, they form the film's emotional core. The younger Wilberforce is a spry politician who wields wit like a quick left jab against conservative elder statesmen, such as the Duke of Clarence (Toby Jones, fresh off his mind-blowing turn as Truman Capote in "Infamous"), who offends Wilberforce by offering up his "field nigger" as collateral for a 25-guinea bet in a game of cards. Wilberforce brings the House of Commons to raucous laughter several times with incisive barbs questioning the intelligence of the duke and that of a more formidable adversary, Lord Tarleton (the marvelously arch Cieran Hinds, "Munich," "The Sum of All Fears").
Apted's camera delights in Wilberforce's brilliance, surrounding Gruffudd with wonderfully gas-lit interiors and the bucolic greenery of Wilberforce's countryside estate. Wilberforce loved animals so much he apparently gave them free run of his home. A running joke finds servants shooing chickens and rabbits, even a fox, out of a drawing room or a dining room to make the house presentable before guests arrive.
Wilberforce also regales his colleagues with a superb singing voice meant "to praise the Lord or change the world." The young Wilberforce lies on his back in the grass, finding God in a spider's web and puzzling over his youthful dilemma of whether to become a politician or a holy minister. The dilemma is quickly resolved by the arrival of evangelical abolitionist Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell, "The Prestige," "Dark City") and Olaudah Equiano (Youssou N'Dour), a freed slave whose autobiography is a best-seller. Equiano's stories of ships loaded with chained slaves whose blood flows as freely as dank water below decks are enough to convince Wilberforce that he can both serve God and be a politician by jumping onto the abolitionists' bandwagon.
 The exchange reveals a couple of the film's sticking points. The first is its curious scarcity of black characters. There must've been thousands of slaves working in British homes and fields, but they don't appear on film, excepting of course, the slave wagered by the Duke of Clarence and a couple of other slaves who appear singly in nightmarish visions imagined by Wilberforce.
The second is Wilberforce's mixture of God and politics. Certain Muslim fundamentalists exploit a similar mixture in current times to espouse terrorism. The filmmakers comment on this similarity indirectly by depicting Clarkson as a fomenter of violent revolt. But Clarkson's bloody acts all occur off screen, and he gains sympathetic portrayal as a working-class hero on screen. The filmmakers avoid controversy by eschewing the issue, but addressing it would've provided a more textured rendering of Wilberforce and a nod to the deleterious possibilities this brand of politics would inspire generations later.
The film functions well within its chosen scope, however, which limits the focus to the triumph of Wilberforce's effort. He and his allies toiled for 25 years before the House of Commons, finally abolishing slavery in 1807, a full 10 years after he married Spooner. His many travails included obtaining a petition of 390,000 signatures as evidence of popular support, withstanding accusations of treason during England's war with Napoleon, and ferreting out slave-trading merchants who bribed House members. By any account, it's a remarkable story.
The ending arrives anticlimactically, after the film skips forward a number of years and the major battles have all been won or lost. Nonetheless, the overwhelming joy of Wilberforce's accomplishment and the ripple effect it would have years later in America is the winning mood of the film. ||
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