Amazing Grace (DVD)

Director Michael Apted's Amazing Grace is a solid biography on just about every level save one. Unfortunately, that one is by far the most important as solid direction, beautiful cinematography, exquisite costuming and exceptional acting can only get you so far when the story you're telling is an almost interminable bore.

Writer Steven Knight (such as Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises) unfortunately lets everyone down. His script is a ponderously didactic thunderclap drowning all its drama in syrupy good intentions so thick even Mrs. Buttersworth would run away from the table screaming.

Too bad, really, because the story of 19th Century British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce (excellently portrayed here by Mr. Fantastic himself Ioan Gruffudd) is one certainly deserving of being told. He spent decades battling the slave trade in England, every year launching efforts to stop this insidious practice and turn his country in a different direction, finally succeeding at the expense of his health dying just two days after his final victory.

Obviously the man is a hero in the United Kingdom and rightly so if you ask me, yet a politician able to stand up and do the right thing even when all were against him deserves far more than this. His romance with wife Barbara (Romola Garai) is filled with treacle and decidedly unfocused, while his strong friendship with British Prime Minister William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch) is never as focused and assured is it probably should be.

But Knight's worst decision was to play up Wilberforce's connections with John Newton (Albert Finney), a former slave trader who renounced his ways and went to live in a monastery as penitence for what he saw as his evil ways. He's the man who wrote the revered title hymn, but every time the film stops to focus all the drama in the picture comes to an immediate stop. Newton and Wilberforce's moments together just ooze in forced treacle, and as much as respected both men in principal watching them communicate here was about as entertaining as watching the proverbial paint dry.

All of this in the end can't help but make me once again consider the perplexing filmography of Apted. Any man responsible for bring the fantastic Up films (49Up being the most recent entry) is worthy of monumental praise, but on the narrative side of things it is hard to imagine a director with a more up-and-down career than this one. Stardust (circa 1974 not 2007), Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorky Park, Gorillas in the Mist, Thunderheart, Enigma; films so good you can't help but want to call them borderline classics. First Born, Critical Condition, Extreme Measures, The World is Not Enough, Enough; films so bad you almost have to wonder how the guy keeps getting work.

Amazing Grace lies somewhere smack-dab in-between all of these features. Any picture as well acted (Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Toby Jones and especially Ciarán Hinds have some downright brilliant moments here) as this one deserves at least a modicum of praise, but thanks to the inert didacticism of Knight's screenplay much of this goodwill is mercilessly erased. The whole things ends up being like a rather benign history lesson taught be a well-intentioned if rather humdrum professor, and sad to say by the time it was over I felt like the film had just entered one ear only to rush right outside the other.

The special features on the movies DVD release are actually pretty good. There is the solid "How Sweet the Sound: The Story of Amazing Grace" documentary which better than the typical making-of piece, the absorbing "Finding Freedom" featurette and some great interactive study guides and teaching tools which actually made me want to learn more of Wilberforce's story. Best of all is Apted and Gruffudd's commentary track, the two of them so engaging I didn't mind sitting through this lukewarm docudrama for a second time one little bit. Only Grammy nominee Chris Tomlin's version of "Amazing Grace" left a bad taste in my mouth, this music video even more sweet and heavy-handed than anything to be found in Knight's disappointing script.