Amazing Grace

Date watched 5th February 2011
Genre- Historical events/Drama
Year- 2006
Running Time- 1hr 53 mins
Directed By- Michael Apted
Written By- Steven Knight
Actors- Ioan Gruffold, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch et al.
Acting-4/5
Keeping my attention- 2/4
Visuals/Direction- 4/5
Story/Plot- 5/6
Total 15/20

Plot

The year 1797, William Wilberforce (Gruffold) has been working hard to abolish the slave trade in Britain. While taking a break in the country to improve his health, and haunted by images of slaves, he meets Barbara Spooner (Garai), and shares the story of his struggle for the abolition of slavery. With a newfound energy for his cause he heads back to parliament to fight. But will he succeed in his latest quest to finally bring an end to the British slave trade?

My Personal Views

I originally bought this film for my mum for Mother’s day (and Amazon says I bought it on 25th February 2008) and in truth I haven’t seen it since Mother’s day 2008.

I know about the slave trade of course but it’s not something I am very knowledgeable about, it’s not like it gets taught in school that much. This movie doesn’t fill in all the gaps of my knowledge of the slave trade but it does go some way in helping to piece together the struggle for its abolition. When watching movies like this I always find that I end up looking further into the subject matter, and this movie was no exception, I can’t remember everything I found out though, which is such a shame.

It is nice to see Gruffold in a British role again, I was never a fan of his Fantastic Four role, and I only wish he would do more work like this, in fact if I’m honest I want to see more Hornblower expeditions. In this film his performance is believable and sound. Albert Finney’s performance iseartfelt and genuine; as a man haunted by the souls of 20,000 slaves he helped to move around the world as a captain of a slave ship turned monk. It is also nice to see Rufus Sewell in something where he is not the bad guy. And for everyone in general in this movie there are good solid performances

It is disturbing to think all of this actually happened and it is only just over 200 years ago that slavery in Britain was abolished. This film puts across this struggle in a way that isn’t too preachy and balances the sadness of the story with the positives of fighting for what you believe in.

Some aspects of this production look cheap, like the titles but all in all it is a good movie and you forget about some of the other less well produced aspects, or at least I did.

So where does this movie lose points? In the attention category, because this movie skips around it gets hard to keep up and gets confusing trying to remember who is who. It does really pick up speed in the second half (30mins from the end or so) but it’s the fact that it is quite slow and confusing getting to this part that fails it.

This is not the sort of movie to watch if you need cheering up or you’re tired. It also made me cry at the end the first time I watched it (and possibly a little this second time).

I do however love the use of the hymn Amazing Grace throughout the movie and the bagpipes during the end credits are wonderful, I love bagpipes (sad as that might be).

Outcome

Despite the fact that this film is a little gem I wouldn’t be watching it all the time. The fact that I haven’t seen it since 2008 speaks for itself; but more in a Shindlers List kind of way, excellence and involving a important yet brutal part of history that we should never forget but hard to watch as you know that the events, although they may not be 100% accurate, are actual events from our history. So on that note and in an effort to reduce the size of my DVD collect I think this may be ending up on ebay. Sorry.