Amazing Grace

The subject at the centre of this film is political procedure. For twenty years William Wilberforce introduced bills in Parliament to end the British slave trade and was defeated repeatedly; the loss in 1791 was heavy. The film tells this not as a story of triumph but as a process of attrition. The casting is worth noting. Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays his close friend William Pitt, the future prime minister. Albert Finney plays John Newton: a former slave trader turned evangelical minister, and the man who wrote the words to Amazing Grace. Newton's effect on Wilberforce is the best thing here; he is the one who persuades the young man to stay in politics rather than enter the church. Michael Apted directed, with Michael Gambon and Romola Garai in support. It opened in Canada on 16 September 2006 and in the United States on 23 February 2007. Who it is for: viewers who like parliamentary history, the mechanics of a long campaign, and classical British period drama. Who it is not for: anyone who wants slavery seen from the side of the enslaved. The film happens almost entirely in rooms belonging to white parliamentarians, and that approach draws criticism.