1 of 2

For many, the new film Amazing Grace will be their introduction to William Wilberforce, a devout Christian who, as a British parliamentarian, fought most of his life to ban the British slave trade. He finally succeeded in 1807—exactly 200 years ago to the day when the movie releases this Friday.

Despite that claim to fame, many are clueless about Wilberforce. But not British director Michael Apted, who was a history major at Cambridge and well aware of the abolitionist's place in history.

Apted on the set of 'Amazing Grace'

Apted, 66, is perhaps best known for films like The World Is Not Enough, Gorillas in the Mist, and Coal Miner's Daughter. But his best critical acclaim has been reserved for his Up films—a series of documentaries following the lives of several Brits every seven years. The first film was called 7 Up, the second 14 Up, and so on, till last year's 49 Up, which caught up with its subjects at the age of 49.

Between the Up films and the bio-pics about Dian Fossey and Loretta Lynn, Apted obviously has some experience depicting the lives of real people. But filming Wilberforce's story seems to have had a special impact on Apted, who says he was moved by the politician's passion for social justice, calling him a "man of principle."

We recently chatted with Apted about the new movie, and about his impressions of Wilberforce.

How did you get involved with this project, and why did you want to do it?

Michael Apted: The project had been around for some time, and they were having problems getting it going—I think the problem largely was scripts that I read. Generally, for a diverse audience, I think the early scripts were too much the story of a man's finding, losing, and finding Christianity again. I think they were having a hard time setting the project for a larger audience.

I came in and said I had another way of doing it. I wanted to focus on the anti-slave trade act itself, which I thought, for all the great work he did in his life, could well be seen as kind of a central event, an event you could hang everything off. And so I sold them on that. So then we hired Steven Knight to write the script, and off we went.

I've always wanted to do a film about politics, and since politics has become so discredited in modern times, I quite like to do a film where politics is seen as somewhat heroic. And this seemed to me a genuine piece of political heroism. And so that's really how I became involved in it.

Many people have never heard of Wilberforce. What kind of challenges did that bring to making this film?

Apted: I think it's a challenge in the marketing. I don't know how much a challenge it was for me in making the film—except it was clearly a good idea to make it as attractive as I could, to put in the film people with somewhat recognizable names. But I'm hoping the power of the story on many levels will carry it—on the Christian level, and on the Camelot level if you want … you know, the generational thing of two young men taking on the British establishment. And the heroism of the story.

My problems were trying to compress the story, trying to get the balance of the background and the current, and to see whether people could follow the film in terms of going into flashback. What I liked about the structure—centering it around the slave trade act—was that I could compress everything. I could tell the story of the anti-slave trade act—which in fact took over 20 years—much quicker. And I could cherry-pick the parts of his life that I wanted to deal with, so that you weren't stuck with a linear structure.

How much did you know about Wilberforce before taking on this project?

Apted: Quite a bit, because I studied history for two years at Cambridge. This has always been a period of English history that's really interested me, because it was a very complicated time with a lot of great community work, social work, artistic work, and scientific work. It was a very rich period of English history.

Wilberforce's anti-slave trade act, by mobilizing the voice of the people in this small way, set the table ready for all the great revolutions in the 19th century—all the emancipation acts, the voting acts and all the great social changes. I'm very interested in the way people like Wilberforce managed to have a vision about English society.

next page... |  1 of 2 | last page

Related Elsewhere:

Save the Wales	Printer view
Veteran producer Ken Wales, who recently finished Amazing Grace, the William Wilberforce bio-pic, now turns to John Newton's story—and a Chariots of Fire sequel.

---

A Fantastic Role	Printer view
Ioan Gruffudd, best known for his role as the leader of The Fantastic Four, reprises a bit of history with his latest part, as the Christian abolitionist William Wilberforce in the new film, Amazing Grace.