Amazing Grace
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[edit] Blurb
Amazing Grace, based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce, is directed by Michael Apted (The World is Not Enough, Coal Miner's Daughter) from an original screenplay written by Academy Award® nominee Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things).
The film stars Ioan Gruffudd (Black Hawk Down), Albert Finney (Erin Brockovich), Romola Garai (Vanity Fair), Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking), Rufus Sewell (Legend of Zorro), Ciaran Hinds (Rome) and introduces Youssou N'Dour.
Executive Producer is Jeanney Kim, with Mark Cooper as co-producer. Producers on the film are Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) and Ed Pressman under their Sunflower Productions banner, Patricia Heaton and David Hunt for FourBoys Films, and Ken Wales.
Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, who, as a Member of Parliament, navigated the world of 18th Century backroom politics to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Albert Finney plays John Newton, a confidante of Wilberforce who inspires him to pursue a life of service to humanity. Benedict Cumberbatch is William Pitt the Younger, England's youngest ever Prime Minister at the age of 24, who encourages his friend Wilberforce to take up the fight to outlaw slavery and supports him in his struggles in Parliament.
Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21, and on his way to a successful political career, Wilberforce, over the course of two decades, took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery.
Romola Garai plays Barbara Spooner, a beautiful and headstrong young woman who shares Wilberforce's passion for reform, and who becomes his wife after a whirlwind courtship. Youssou N'Dour is Olaudah Equiano. Born in Africa and sent as a slave to the Colonies, Equiano bought his freedom and made his home in London, where he wrote a best-selling account of his life and became a leading figure in the fight to end the slavery of his fellow countrymen.[1]
[edit] View from Nowhere
With deep visceral compassion for slaves, William Wilberforce, the MP, spends much of his adult life and political influence working to convince the British Parliament to eradicate slavery. The story of the struggle makes the film a work of amazing grace itself. It shows that a few compassionate men can change the world for the better. And it shows what life was like for the slaves, the slavers, and the those with business and political interests in a continuing slave trade.
How much more profound the film though, if it is taken in a Buddhist perspective. We are all slaves, slaves of an ignorance so profound we don't even know we are slaves. (Recall Morpheus in the first Matrix, "you are a slave Neo…") Yet movies like this resonate so deeply, because we, in fact, identify with the slaves. Like sailing on the slave ship Madagascar, we sail on a cosmic ship of fools, fools because we don't even know we are slaves. And indeed, the film shows Wilberforce tortured during his life, by visions of slavery, by dreams of slavery, by identification and compassion for those in slavery. He could not be free while others were in bondage. And he wanted to be free. And like a Bodhisattva, he devoted his life to the liberation of others, as part of his own path of liberation.
In this context then, recall the first of the four Great Vows of a Bodhisattva, "Ordinary beings (slaves to ignorance) are innumerable, I vow to liberate them all."
His was a consistent compassion. Wilberforce later helped to found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. His kindness to the poor was such that he ordered his cook to prepare meals for any poor person that might show up at his door. Amazing.
Ship of Fools by Fernando Casas [2]
[edit] Other Views from Nowhere
