Amazing Grace | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Michael Apted |
Written by | Steven Knight |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Remi Adefarasin |
Edited by | Rick Shaine |
Music by | David Arnold |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 118 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $29 million |
Box office | $32.1 million [1] |
Amazing Grace is a 2006 biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the abolitionist campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the 1772 hymn "Amazing Grace". The film also recounts the experiences of John Newton as a captain of slave ships and subsequent Christian conversion, which inspired his writing of the poem later used in the hymn. Newton is portrayed as a major influence on Wilberforce and the abolition movement.
The film premièred on 16 September 2006 at the Toronto International Film Festival, followed by showings at the Heartland Film Festival, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and the European Film Market, before opening in wide US release on 23 February 2007, [1] which coincided with the 200th anniversary of the date the British parliament voted to ban the slave trade.
In 1797, William Wilberforce is severely ill and taking a recuperative holiday in Bath, Somerset, with his cousin, Henry Thornton. It is here that Wilberforce is introduced to his future wife, Barbara Spooner. Although he initially resists any romantic overtures, she convinces him to relate the story of his career.
The story flashes back 15 years to 1782, and Wilberforce recounts the events that led him to where he is now. Beginning as a young, ambitious, and popular Member of Parliament (MP), he experiences a religious enlightenment and aligns himself with the evangelical wing of the Church of England. Wilberforce contemplates leaving politics to study theology, but is persuaded by his friends William Pitt, Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More, and Olaudah Equiano that he will be more effective doing the work of God by taking on the unpopular and dangerous issue of the abolition of the British slave trade. His conviction in the cause deepens following a meeting with his former mentor John Newton (introduced mopping a church floor dressed in sackcloth) who is said to live "in the company of 20,000 ghosts… slaves". As a former slave ship captain turned Christian, he deeply regrets his past life and the effects on his fellow man. Newton urges Wilberforce to take up the cause.
Pitt becomes Prime Minister and Wilberforce becomes a key supporter and confidant. Pitt gives Wilberforce the opportunity to present a bill before the house outlawing the slave trade. Wilberforce's passionate campaigning leads him to become highly unpopular in the House of Commons. He is opposed by a coalition of MPs and peers representing vested interests of the slave trade in London, Bristol, Glasgow, and Liverpool led by Banastre Tarleton and the Duke of Clarence. Despite popular support and the assistance of an unlikely ally in the form of Charles James Fox, Wilberforce's bill to abolish the slave trade goes down to defeat. Afterward, the film portrays Pitt as one of his few friends and allies remaining in Parliament, however even their relationship becomes strained. Pitt, now facing the stresses of leading a shaky coalition during the French Revolutionary Wars, tells Wilberforce that his cause must now wait for a more stable political climate.
Wilberforce keeps up the fight but after years of failure he is left exhausted and frustrated that he was unable to change anything in the government. Believing his life's work has been in vain, he becomes physically ill, suffering from chronic colitis which causes him to become addicted to laudanum prescribed for the crippling pain, which brings the story back up to 1797. Having virtually given up hope, Wilberforce considers leaving politics forever. Barbara convinces him to keep fighting because there is no other person who is willing or able to do so. A few days afterward, William Wilberforce and Barbara marry. Several years pass with no further success. Wilberforce's wife and new children provide him with the support and strength needed to carry on the fight.
Finally, with a renewed hope for success Wilberforce devises a backdoor method of slowly weakening the slave trade through seemingly innocuous legislation. Aided by Thornton, Clarkson, and new ally James Stephen and cheered on by the now terminally ill Pitt, he reintroduces his bill to abolish the slave trade. In time, after the 20-year campaign and many attempts to bring legislation forward, he is eventually responsible for a bill being passed through Parliament in 1807, which abolishes the slave trade in the British Empire forever.
The film was shot primarily in Hull, Yorkshire. Baker's Quay, which forms part of the Parliament Docks on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, was used as a backdrop against which to recreate the atmosphere of the East India Docks in London circa 1780. Shooting took place during October 2005 and involved the tall ships, Kaskelot , Earl of Pembroke, Johanna Lucretia and Phoenix. [2] During January 2006, the scenes from The Houses of Parliament were shot at the 1743 Church within Chatham Historic Dockyard. The wedding scene was filmed at Garsington Church. [3]
A number of outside scenes were shot at the former Greenwich Hospital, now part of the University of Greenwich and around Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Executive Producer is Jeanney Kim, with Mark Cooper as co-producer. Producers on the film are Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) and Ed Pressman under their Sunflower Productions banner, Patricia Heaton and David Hunt for FourBoys Films, and Ken Wales. [4]
The soundtrack of Christian music included the title song "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)" by Chris Tomlin. The score was named Instrumental Album of the Year at the Dove Awards of 2008. [5]
Amazing Grace brought in a little over $4 million at the US box office over its opening weekend of 23–25 February 2007, making it the 10th-highest-grossing film for the weekend, behind such new releases as The Astronaut Farmer and The Number 23 . As of 26 August 2007 the film had $32,050,774. [1]
Amazing Grace received positive reviews. Philip French described the film as "not exactly innovative" and compared it to "earnestly worthy prewar Warner Brothers cinebiographies". Overall he called it "a very decent contribution to the present bicentennial celebrations of the parliamentary bill that outlawed the slave trade in the British empire". [6] Wally Hammond writing for Time Out singled out Benedict Cumberbatch's performance for praise saying his performance "quietly upstaged" the fine performance of Gruffudd. [7] The Guardian gave it a C− for the entertainment value and an A− for its historical accuracy. [8]
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 67% based on review from 126 critics, with an average rating of 6.50/10. According to the website, the film is "your quintessential historical biopic: stately, noble, and with plenty of electrifying performances". [9] Metacritic gives the film a 65 out of 100, based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [10]
Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result |
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2008 | Evening Standard British Film Awards | Best Screenplay | Steven Knight | Nominated |
2008 | London Film Critics' Circle | British Breakthrough – Acting | Benedict Cumberbatch | Nominated |
2008 | Christopher Award | Feature Film | Amazing Grace | Won |
2008 | Genesis Awards | Outstanding Feature Film | Nominated | |
2007 | Humanitas Prize | Feature Film | Nominated | |
2007 | Satellite Award | Production Design | David Allday Matthew Gray Charles Wood | Nominated |
Best Costume Design | Jenny Beavan | Nominated | ||
"Amazing Grace" is a Christian hymn published in 1779, written in 1772 by English Anglican clergyman and poet John Newton (1725–1807). It is an immensely popular hymn, particularly in the United States, where it is used for both religious and secular purposes.
John Newton was an English evangelical Anglican cleric and slavery abolitionist. He had previously been a captain of slave ships and an investor in the slave trade. He served as a sailor in the Royal Navy and was himself enslaved for a time in West Africa. He is noted for being author of the hymns Amazing Grace and Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.
William Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, and became an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an Evangelical Anglican, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.
The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were a group of social reformers associated with Holy Trinity Clapham in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Despite the label "sect", most members remained in the established Church of England, which was highly interwoven with offices of state. However, its successors were in many cases outside of the established Anglican Church.
The thumbscrew is a torture instrument which was first used in early modern Europe. It is a simple vise, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. The crushing bars were sometimes lined with sharp metal points to puncture the nails. While the most common design operated upon a single thumb or big toe, variants could accommodate both big toes, all five fingers of one hand, or all ten toes.
Thomas Clarkson was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not automatically emancipate those enslaved at the time, it encouraged British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. It took effect on 1 May 1807, after 18 years of trying to pass an abolition bill.
Olaudah Equiano, known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa, was a writer and abolitionist. According to his memoir, he was from the village of Essaka in modern southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child in West Africa, he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before purchasing his freedom in 1766.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, first published in 1789 in London, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, an African from what is now Nigeria who was enslaved in childhood and eventually earned his freedom and became an abolitionist in the United Kingdom.
The Sierra Leone Company was the corporate body involved in founding the second British colony in Africa on 11 March 1792 through the resettlement of Black Loyalists who had initially been settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. The company came about because of the work of the ardent abolitionists Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Henry Thornton, and Thomas's brother John Clarkson, who is considered one of the founding fathers of Sierra Leone. The company was the successor to the St. George Bay Company, a corporate body established in 1790 that re-established Granville Town in 1791 for the 60 remaining Old Settlers.
Alexander Falconbridge was a British surgeon who took part in four voyages in slave ships between 1782 and 1787. In time he became an abolitionist and in 1788 published An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. In 1791 he was sent by the Anti-Slavery Society to Granville Town, Sierra Leone, a community of freed slaves, where he died a year later in 1792.
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787. The objective of abolishing the slave trade was achieved in 1807. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies followed in 1833.
Events from the year 1789 in Great Britain.
The Sons of Africa were a late-18th-century group in Britain that campaigned to end African chattel slavery. The "corresponding society" has been called the Britain's first black political organisation. Its members were educated Africans in London, including formerly enslaved men such as Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community.
John Kimber was the captain of a British slave ship who was tried for murder in 1792, after the abolitionist William Wilberforce accused him of torturing to death an enslaved teenaged girl on the deck of his ship. Kimber was acquitted, but the trial gained much attention in the press. The case established that slave ships' crew could be tried for murder of slaves.
The Slave Trade Act 1788, also known as the Regulated Slave Trade Act 1788 or Dolben's Act, was an Act of Parliament that limited the number of enslaved people that British slave ships could transport, based on the ships' tons burthen (bm). It was the first British legislation enacted to regulate slave shipping.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves is a non-fiction book by Adam Hochschild that was first published by Houghton Mifflin on January 7, 2005. The book is a narrative history of the late 18th- and early 19th-century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire. The story centers around a group of British abolitionist campaigners and traces their campaign from its beginnings with Somerset v Stewart in 1772 until full emancipation for all British slaves was legally granted in 1838. The book looks at the setbacks the abolitionists faced as well as the campaign tactics they used, and explains how they were ultimately able to end the practice of slavery in Britain.
Marianne Thornton was an English human rights activist, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery.