AMAZING GRACE

DVD REVIEW

AMAZING GRACE,2007

A movie about the ending of the slave trade and the eventual ending of slavery in Britain is a worthy subject in this year of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of its abolition. One should note that this was done, unlike in the United States, by mainly democratic means rather than civil war. Would that all our victories could be won in such a manner but history is replete with many more examples of the necessity for bloody social struggles to get what we need, win or lose.

The core of this film is however a little disquieting as to its fidelity to historic facts or at least the way they are presented on the screen. In my youth I believed that Wilberforce’s parliamentary fight was the key to abolition. While it is impossible to ignore his contribution to the struggle against slavery time and more study have revealed many other factors, not the least the push from below by the working class and other oppressed strata of British society, in contributing to that result. Based solely on the film one would never get the impression that those efforts from below counted and once again we are treated to that timeworn premise that the ‘great man’ was decisive.

Commercial films are not obliged by their nature to be paragons of historical correctness. An informative article in a recent New York Review of Books (June 14, 2007) discusses in greater detail the historical problems than I wish to do here. While I encourage everyone to see this film (if for not other reason that the magnificent perform by Albert Finney) one should use that as a starting point to investigate the other details about this great struggle to end a heinous crime against blacks and against humanity.