It is good that a film was made about this great man. Unfortunately it succumbs to political correctness by downplaying the religious motive of Wilberforce's campaigns, most especially against slavery. Having gone thru a conversion experience in his twenties, he was an evangelical Christian belonging to the Clapham Sect, who here are depicted merely as a group of friends. They were far more than that. Further the film, as is the current fashion, is dumbed down. Thus the magnificent oration praising Wilberforce in the House of Commons when it has finally, after almost twenty years of struggle, enacted the bill outlawing the slave trade, is reduced to the level of a fourth grader. To hear the actual oration, and part of Wilberforce's speech first proposing abolition of the trade many years before, watch on You Tube the far, far superior BBC The Fight Against Slavery, a six part series broadcast in the late 1970s. Everything in this is scrupulously accurate history, as I learned in the reading it promoted me to undertake. It is the most outstanding tv mini-series I have ever seen.
Review of Amazing Grace
