Amazing Grace
04.06.07 - 12:38 a.m.

Click on the picture to the left to go to the official Amazing Grace movie website! (has trailer, cast and movie information, and further reading)

I went to watch Amazing Grace today. I can truthfully say that I have never felt such strong emotion at any movie (not counting the Passion) since I first watched La Revolution Francaise 5 years ago (the 6-hour epic about the French Revolution).

This is the amazing, inspiring and deeply moving true story of how one man's dedication to his strong conviction of right and wrong helped to get the slave trade abolished - how a group of young British politicians with ideals that they clung on to through years of failure and sickness managed to end one of the greatest abuses of humankind. This story has been done justice by a movie of great finesse and beauty, employing some of the best acting talents in Britain and one of the strongest and most witty scripts I have ever seen.

Everyone should watch it. It is even more inspiring than Chariots Of Fire. It will make you want to fight for humanity even more than The Motorcycle Diaries. It is witty without being flighty, weighty without being cumbersome, handsome without being grandiose, real without being preachy. It is the BEST movie I have seen in 5 years.

This is an amazing movie.

* * *

It's the kind of movie that I'd watch again and again and again, if I had the DVD. (When I get it!) I really cannot find anything to compare it to except La Revolution Francaise (well, I guess a natural subject for comparison). Both films, which demonstrate so vividly how men who believe truly in setting right over wrong can change the world, were made for bicentennial anniversaries in fact (of the passing of the anti-slave-trade Act in 1807 and the French Revolution in 1789, respectively). Both are set in a similar period of history and have the same vivid excitement - that timbre of life which is both so naturalistic and yet cinematic - of ordinary people being used to bring about extraordinary change; the same combination of perfectly scripted but perfectly believable humour - and deep seriousness which comes not from the words of the script but from life itself.

It was also very interesting to see how the anti-slavery movement was affected by the French Revolution - how the war with France led to the movement's failure but also enabled it to succeed. It's amazing to see how events turned out so that a cause which looked so hopeless became, over the course of one man's lifetime, one which succeeded in the end and changed the course of history for the better.

It's made me realise that while I spent so many years of my life being deeply moved by the events that were happening in France over that period of time, a similarly noble struggle was taking place in Britain, both inspired by lofty ideals of fighting for the rights of man. Only, while the movement in France became corrupted by evil (in the search to remain uncorrupted by "counterrevolution") due to the flawed nature of the humans who were making themselves arbiters of justice and reason because they knew no higher authority than their own powers of reason, the movement led by William Wilberforce - who did not appoint himself arbiter of justice and reason, but submitted always to God's authority in matters of right and wrong - ultimately ended in true victory and the abolishment of the slave trade.

To think that I used to think of Pitt and Fox as "bad guys"! (Obviously I was a loyal, Rousseau-reading, Paine-waving Jacobin) But after watching the movie I realise that their part in the equally colourful politics of Britain at the time was actually a morally courageous one.. and have newfound respect for them :)

The acting and script of this show were so good! Ioan Gruffudd, who can always be counted on to deliver a splendid performance, did, of course, and he holds the whole show together. But actually, if there is one actor who could be said to have acted even better than Ioan Gruffudd, it was relative newcomer Benedict Cumberbatch, who played William Pitt the Younger in a masterly performance that was wonderful to see - a young man who becomes Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister... at the age of 24!... gradually taking on the graces and maturity needed for the position, and the toughness and the charm of a man who learns how to ensure his survival and that of his country.

It is hard to to pick a best actor though. The ensemble cast, deftly assembled, delieved a brilliant performance, from Michael Gambon as the (somewhat Mirabeau-like) old, wily experienced politician and unlikely ally Charles James Fox, to Jeremy Swift as Wilberforce's autodidact butler. Of course there's Romola Garai as Barbara, the woman whom Wilberforce marries. And Wilberforce has his colleagues: Youssou N'Dour, a famous French-language singer, acts as the former slave Equiano who is now a preacher; Rufus Sewell (whom I'd previously seen only in A Knight's Tale) is the engaging Thomas Clarkson, who seems in the movie to be a conglomeration of both the real-life Thomas Clarkson and the radical Thomas Paine (whose support of the revolution in France was not shared by the real-life Thomas Clarkson, I think). Meanwhile, Ciaran Hinds (I know him best as Bois-Guilbert in the BBC's Ivanhoe) and Toby Jones (The Painted Veil) deliver jewels of performances as opposition speakers.

I love this show. I'm going to see it again when it comes out on DVD. And again... And again... And again...