Amazing Grace (Fox Home Video/Bristol Bay, 117 minutes, available on DVD November 13, 2007). Click here to view the trailer.
This movie takes its title, and key portions of its soundtrack, from the hymn composed by John Newton (here played as a wise old man by Albert Finney), a slave-ship captain who famously underwent a conversion at sea, becoming a clergyman and passionate abolitionist. One of Newton's disciples was the equally famous William Wilberforce, the English politician whose life's work led to the abolition of the slave trade in England.
"Where did this little terrier spring from?" quips one affronted Member of Parliament to another upon hearing Wilberforce's feisty fighting words. "I believe he's a Yorkshire terrier, my lord," comes the reply. To Wilberforce, that would be high praise, for in addition to being a dog with a bone on the subject of abolition, he was also a dog lover and animal activist who helped found Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Apart from this trenchant bit of dialogue, dogs don't play a huge role in this film; we occasionally catch a glimpse of one of Wilberforce's pet canines darting by, just a normal part of the scenery along with the hares and other species of fauna he lived with. And yet, it's quite clear from the movie's very first scene that this great man's love for animals, his profound compassion for the voiceless, helped make him a hero.
As played by Ioan Gruffudd, Wilberforce is gorgeous inside and out, as are Youssou N'Dour as the freed slave and author Olaudah Equiano, Romola Garai as Wilberforce's wife Barbara Spooner, Rufus Sewell as Thomas Clarkson, and Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt the Younger. Kudos to director Michael Apted: his hymn to Amazing Grace is almost as inspiring as the music it celebrates.
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