This film has been described as stolid ("too many parliamentary speeches"), but I would rather say "old fashioned". It is very much a reprise of the earnest 1940's style of biopic exemplified by "A Song to Remember" (about Chopin) and "The Al Jolson Story". Michael Apted as a director tends to produce poetic documentaries (the Seven-Up series) and prosaic feature films ("Enigma", and even his Bond effort "The World is not Enough"). Here, though there is a literate script from Steven Knight ("Dirty Pretty Things"), the story doesn't come across as well as it might, partly as a result of tinkering with the timeline (1797 to 1783 to 1797 to 1806).
More crucially, we really don't know at the end how William Wilberforce managed to turn round the opinion of those who mattered on the Slavery Question, though we get glimpses of his tactics. We meet some of his supporters, like Thomas Clarkson, a clergyman of revolutionary tendencies, former slaver John Newton and ex-slave Oloudaqh, and the clever Chancery lawyer, James Stephen. They are obviously very committed, but there has to be more to it. Who collected the 390,000 signatures on the petition produced in Parliament? One gets the impression that anti-slavery was a mass movement and Wilberforce, brave and resolute as he may have been, was just the toff who kept on introducing the anti-slave trade bill in the House of Commons - a toff whose subsequent career did not show him to be a friend of the working man.
As the toff in question Ioan Gruffud is just fine, though he's so reluctant to touch his lovely sweetheart Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai) that one marvels that he has so many descendants. The lack of love scenes is probably attributable to the policy of the producers, the Anschutz film group, of keeping their films G or PG. Apparently such films make more money than MA or, horrors, R movies. Anschutz is controlled by a Colorado billionaire of conservative inclinations and evangelical beliefs.
On the basis of this film, the protagonists of slavery were not terribly smart. The thrust of Wilberforce's attack was not so much on slavery itself as the deplorable conditions under which it was conducted. If the slavers had cleaned up their act and accepted a bit of regulation they could have gone on for another 50 years. Instead they just bribed MPs, who eventually had to support abolition to get re-elected.
One pro-slaver featured in the film is William, Duke of Clarence, who later reigned briefly but not too badly as William IV (1830-37). In reality quite a handsome man who had spent 10 years in the Navy, he is portrayed here by Toby Jones as a malevolent dwarf obsessed with gambling. Anachronistically, but for dramatic purposes, he is shown as a member of the House of Commons (William did threaten to stand for the Commons once; his father George III bought him off with a Dukedom, remarking "I well know it is one more vote added to the opposition.").It is true, however that he opposed abolition, having West Indian sugar interests himself..
The role of Wilberforce's old school friend, the child prodigy Prime Minister William Pitt (who became PM at 24), played with feline charm by Benedict Cumberbatch is rather intriguing. Publicly, Pitt had to be very cautious on the slavery issue, but he and Wilbers are shown as very matey indeed in private, running around the lawn together in their underwear. The effect of casting stud-muffin Ioan Gryffud as Wilbers leads the viewer to wonder whether they might be something more than just good mates something they may have missed back in Boulder, Colorado.
There are lots of fine performances here including Nicholas Farrell as Wilber's cousin Henry Thornton, Rufus Sewell as Thomas Clarkson, Michael Gambon as Charles James Fox, and especially Albert Finney as John Newton, the ex-slaver turned Evangelical Anglican priest and composer of hymns. (He not only wrote "Amazing Grace" but also "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken" which somehow finished up with Haydn's music for "Deutschland uber Alles").
Wilberforce in fact only got to first base in the abolition of slavery; his 1807 Act merely prevented transportation of slaves in British ships. It was not until the year of his death 1833, some time after he had retired from public life, that slavery was abolished (more or less) in the British Empire. The British taxpayer picked up the tab to compensate the slave owners for the loss of their property - 20 million pounds (at least a billion in today's money). The slaves got nothing.
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