William Wilberforce was a man of deep religious faith, but a 23-year battle against slavery in Great Britain made him an equally important man of action. Not only did Wilberforce prove that belief and worldly activity aren't incompatible, he showed that one often sustains the other.

But it wasn't Wilberforce's Christianity that drew director Michael Apted to his new movie Amazing Grace. Apted, whose resume includes such films as Coal Miner's Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist, made Amazing Grace partly to satisfy a long-standing interest.

"I'd always wanted to make a film about politics, ideally something contemporary," said Apted, who visited Denver to show his film during November's Starz International Film Festival. "But I could never find a subject. There's so much baggage that comes with politics.

"The script for Amazing Grace came to me as a bio-pic, a straightforward life of Wilberforce. It was a great period of English history. The slave trade set off a huge amount of political activity. "

None of this means that the film neglects Wilberforce's Christianity. At one point, Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) debates whether to become a clergyman or pursue justice in the turbulent corridors of the House of Commons.

"You had to deal with his Christianity," said Apted. "I mean why not? But I wanted to make the anti-slave-trade legislation the centerpiece of the film; that, plus his relationship and courtship of his wife (Romala Garai), which was even more dramatic than it was in the film."

When he began to battle slavery, Wilberforce quickly realized that he was fighting powerful economic interests in a country deeply reliant on the sugar trade and the Caribbean plantations it spawned. Wilberforce's pleas for justice went largely unheeded for a long time.

"It took quite a long part of his young life to do it (pass legislation effectively making it impossible to carry on the slave trade)," Apted said. "I suppose what interested me about about the Christian aspect of it is how men of principle can use that principle as a strength.

"To be a successful politician, you've got to mix it up. You've got to have relationships. You can do both. You can have a principle and balance that with a view of the world. That's what I admired about Wilberforce. He didn't simply proselytize. He went out and did what needed to be done, even if it involved a dirty trick."

Apted is referring to how, at one point, Wilberforce provided his opposition with a trip to a racetrack that happened to coincide with a crucial vote that most of them missed.

The anti-slavery movement in Britain was the work of young men who battled an older establishment. Wilberforce's best friend and political ally, William Pitt, became Britain's youngest prime minister at age 24.

"The one thing I was very keen to preserve - which was a deal-breaking, no-brainer for me - was to have young people playing Wilberforce and Pitt. (Pitt is played by Benedict Cumberbatch.) I think there's an element of Camelot to the film, of one generation taking on an older generation.

"That made the film difficult to cast. You have to find people who can successfully play under 30, and you have to find actors who can carry this kind of stuff. Ioan is one of them. I liked him a lot. He'd done The Fantastic Four so he had a certain credibility. (Gruffudd is 33.)

Americans may think of slavery as a phenomenon of the American South, but Apted - who's British but spends much of his time in Los Angeles - says the English were scarred by slavery, too.

"There were about 5,000 slaves in London during the time of Wilberforce. In our country, we don't have that residue that the country was built on slavery, but a lot of the wealth of the country was built on slavery . . . And, of course, our colonial history was horrendous.

"The film may have different messages for Americans, who in a sense have a culture that's grown up side-by-side with slavery. . . . A vast percentage of citizens in the U.S. came from slaves. We don't share that. We didn't really have many black people in England until after the war."

Money doesn't generally flow toward movies that grapple with social issues, but Apted says financing Amazing Grace (for about $28 million) was easy.

"It was Walden's (Walden Media) project," said Apted, referring to the parent company of Bristol Bay Productions, which produced the film.

"One of Philip Anschutz's heroes is William Wilberforce. (Denver's Anschutz includes Walden among his entertainment holdings.) He wanted to make this film. In many ways, it was easy. You had a studio – a mini-studio – that was really committed to it."

Telling other stories

Director Michael Apted has a long history with documentaries. He is best known to Americans for a long-running series that has been tracking a diverse group of Brits since they were seven. Apted says he'll continue the project, which last featured 49 Up.

Apted also has been spending a lot of time on football - soccer to those of us who live in the U.S.

"I did the official film about the World Cup in Germany. The other one is a film I've been doing for about two years about the impact of the game in various parts of the world.

"It deals with social empowerment in South America and racism in Europe. There are seven stories. The characters in the various stories were all in Germany for the World Cup at some point - as administrators, journalists or players. I believe the game has as big an impact as any idea on the planet."

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. denersteinb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5424

Back to Top