I went to see Amazing Grace tonight with three friends. Two of us really liked this story of William Wilberforce's campaign to abolish the slave trade, while the other two didn't.
It is a flawed film. There is no chronology - the film jumps back and forth and sideways and for no real reason. It is often very confusing and it is difficult to make out how the legislative campaign developed. Yet there are so many powerful moments and emotions that I loved it anyway. At the end when the pipers played Amazing Grace I was wiping the tears away. The scenes with Wilberforce and John Newton, writer of the hymn and former slave trader, were the most poignant.
In the same way I thought the film Romero was flawed but very moving. There is power in the stories of these saints that transcends the limitations of weak film making.
2 comments:
I loved the movie, although its portrayal of John Newton was very inaccurate - his conversation bore very little resemblance to what we know of Newton. Bruce Hindmarsh has a very fine book called 'John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition' which is an in-deoth study of Newton's spirituality set agist the backdrop of the evangelical movement - a very good read.
I know of the book - haven't read it. Thought I'd do a little reading on Newton and Wilberforce. I'll see if I can lay my hands on it.
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