Amazing Grace Movie Review

DVD Cover

American Studies Amazing Grace (2006) (Amazon) Movie Report

Summary

Amazing Grace follows the political life of William Wilberforce who fought, and succeeded, the end the slave trade in the British Empire. Wilberforce worked past countless opposition before the British Parliament voted in his favor. The film also shows John Newton, an Anglican clergyman, and the writing of his famous hymn, Amazing Grace. It takes Wilberforce 20 years to end the slave trade, during which his health suffers. His efforts are ultimately successful, and lead to the ending of the British slave trade.

Connection

Amazing Grace tells the story of the banning of the slave trade from a British political perspective. Although we did not talk much about the British banning of the slave trade, with the exception that it scarred proslvery Southerners, the political process of banning slavery was similar in both the British Empire and the United States.

The main obstacle faced by abolitionists were the politicians who benefited economically by slavery. In defense of the institution which made them quite wealthy, they made up many excuses. For example, in Amazing Grace, a member of parliament states that, "there is no documentation that Africans had any objections to slavery". This is similar to when James Henry Hammond said that slavery had produced the "highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that had ever existed on the face of the earth" (Out of Many 319).