All the ads for HBO’s John Adams miniseries have got me thinking about good historical films. While there are many, one I saw last year that I think missed most folks radar was Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace. The film focuses on the political struggles of William Wilberforce, a leading English abolitionist. “Amazing Grace” isn’t quite “amazing” but what it definitely is, is a well done and much needed storytelling. Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell, Ciarán Hinds and Youssou N’Dour round out an exceptional cast and when combined with solid aesthetics and the direction of Apted, what comes to be is a film that deals with a true life story not enough people know about.

The story follows:

William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), the son of a wealthy merchant, (as he) enters the House of Commons in 1780, when he is all of twenty-one years old; his college friend William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberbach), the son of the former Prime Minister, also twenty-one, enters the Commons the following year. An observer watching them race around a country estate together might think they are planning some prank, like filling the decanters in the Commons waiting rooms with vinegar. They are actually planning the moral reform of the Empire. In an early scene, Pitt, suppressing a grin, advises Wilberforce of his intention to become Prime Minister immediately, which he does, at the age of twenty-four, in 1783. The friends, too young to be abashed by their own presumption, take on the slave-trade interests”a good part of the upper class, which was making a fortune from it”as a kind of consecrated adventure. [The New Yorker]

From here we follow Wilberforce on his long and difficult journey to change policy and people’s minds. The work he did was nothing short of “amazing” but sadly many people don’t know the story of the man that took on the issues that he knew mattered, even as it made his life less than easy.

So please to learn more about Wilberforce’s inspirational tale and watch the trailer for the film below (before you rent it!)