Amazing Grace

Yesterday, I was able to see Amazing Grace at my local cinema. It's one of those films Christians promote to the friends etc. though perhaps not in the same way as The Passion of the Christ or The Chronicles of Narnia.

I think it is certainly well-filmed (the detail is rather excellent) with more than reasonable performances. But as with most films, there is a flaw or two in it. It wasn't until the film was finished that I realised that there was a lack of depicting the slave trade concerned in the film.

We only get a glimpse of it, with at least only two Africans seen on screen, while African boys are shown in a dream that William Wilberforce has. It would have been nice to at least have seen WHAT was being abolished rather than talkingabout it. There are references to the cruelties but instead of seeing slaves being abused, we see a fallen horse being whipped. I would have settled for seeing how slaves were treated in London without it being gratuitous.

It is essentially a slave trade movie without the slaves. Now, Quentin Tarantino described his film Reservoir Dogs as "a heist movie without the heist", but that film was good in how the heist concerned wasn't important in the plot, but the characters involved and what happened after it all went wrong. The Passion of the Christ is another example, focusing on Jesus' suffering and death, with a few flashbacks to earlier in his life and hinted at the Biblical epic that could of been. This could justify the critics' view that the film was mainly preaching to the converted. It would have been interesting to see why this man was being tortured to death.

Getting back to Amazing Grace, it is faithful to William's Christian faith and I was surprised at the subtle line from a character "I'm a great sinner, and Christ is a great Saviour." though some may take it as propaganda.