Amazing Grace portrays the life and work of the British politician and abolitionist campaigner William Wilberforce. The film concentrates on the period of the 1780s and the early 1800s, during which Wilberforce was involved in the movement to abolish the trade in enslaved Africans. The film features a number of high-profile British actors, including, Michael Gambon and Benedict Cumberbatch. Amazing Grace is a skillfully filmed period piece. However, that is not to say the cinematography and pacing of the film forgive any historical inaccuracies present in the film.
The film drifts between past and present, at the outset, the film establishes Wilberforce as a character deserving of sympathy and support, the audience witnesses the great reverence others hold for him as well as his debilitating illness. William Wilberforce is yet again another example of the white savior barely showing the lives of the slaves he is trying to free. The blinkered approach to history made by the film is evidenced by the absence of those who William is fighting for. Apart from random hallucinations, enslaved Africans and their fight for freedom are neglected, and it’s shown that William can barely discuss the subject. In a scene in which William plays poker, he is unable to grasp the reality of the slavery and leaves the room without a second thought to possibly winning the game and freeing the slave. But that’s none of my business. The sheer incongruity of ascribing a revolution to a man who can barely speak about it was apparently not considered to be an issue of the film. Frankly, this film was more about making William a saint than dealing with the issue at hand. Amazing Grace is by no means a historically accurate portrayal of the British abolitionists in the eighteenth century. Its biased approach is so evident that it seems the actual history was a bit of inconvenience.