Week of March 21, 2007, Issue #596
FILM
Not much subtly or Grace in heavy-handed biopic
JOSEF BRAUN / josef@vueweekly.com
Chronicling the tireless efforts of William Wilberforce to persuade Britain’s House of Commons to abolish slavery, Amazing Grace blows through a lot of history in 111 minutes, which certainly says something.
An unquestionable cause; a genuinely altruistic, handsome, sensitive hero (dutifully embodied by Ioan Gruffudd) pushing it through despite seemingly insurmountable odds; a colourful crew of supporting characters; even a dash of romance. (Hot activists in love!) What more could one ask for in a movie? Well ...
It’s not easy making a very good movie about a saint. It’s not even a very good idea—though no doubt behind such a movie exists some perfectly good intentions. I hear people don’t read much, so here’s a digestible, compacted way to keep alive this vitally important chapter of history. Except I have to wonder if those same people who wouldn’t read about Wilberforce are necessarily going to run out to see a movie about him.
Boldly, bluntly directed by Michael Apted, Amazing Grace should convince just about anybody that slavery was, you know, a goddamned abomination. (When some unsavoury Lord utters the word “nigger,” the brooding score jumps in right on cue to just let us know that the filmmakers totally don’t approve.)
Having said that, this film, largely confined to politicians’ chambers and 40-room country cottages, never needs to get too bogged down with actual horrors. The one time it does offer a quick glimpse of slave life, Apted chooses to gloss it over with a burnished glaze and soft focus.
But it isn’t enough to criticize this movie for its dominance of powdered wigs and furrowed English brows. Amazing Grace, to be fair, is more essentially about the mechanics of social change than it is about social ills, thus its passages dealing specifically with politics tend to be the most engaging.
As time rushes onward and bad age make-up gets slapped on more thickly, however, there’s no time to spend honing any single theme, much less one as thorny as the process of tearing down a vast, wealth-producing colonial institution.
Amazing Grace is basically your average biopic, a blurry portrait that sacrifices detail and insight in favour of the grand sweep: Wilberforce questions, strives, suffers (he had colitis) and then strives again; hard-earned triumph arrives; the end. He starts the movie chiding a stranger for beating a conspicuously black horse (subtlety isn’t a priority, I guess) and ends the movie getting applauded by a bunch of old bastards who took 18 years to realize he was right. At least there’s a truckload of terrific actors to help give this thing some texture, though few have ample opportunity to do much other than pose for Apted’s next crane shot. V
Opens Fri, Mar 23
Amazing Grace
Directed by Michael Apted
Written by Steven Knight
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, Benedict Cumberbatch