{"id":1694,"date":"2007-02-26T10:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T10:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/02\/is-he-a-fundamentalist-a-fanatic-or\/"},"modified":"2007-02-26T10:35:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T10:35:00","slug":"is-he-a-fundamentalist-a-fanatic-or","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/02\/is-he-a-fundamentalist-a-fanatic-or.html","title":{"rendered":"Is he a “fundamentalist”? a “fanatic”? or…?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
I\u2019ve been away from the computer for at least 40 hours, so I\u2019ve got a lot of catching up to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, I just want to note two comments on Amazing Grace<\/a><\/i>, a film which was #10 in \u201cNorth America\u201d this past weekend, though it does not come to Canada for almost four weeks.<\/p>\n

First, Beliefnet\u2019s Charlotte Allen writes at OpinionJournal.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is rare that a Hollywood film takes up a subject like William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British parliamentarian who devoted nearly his entire 45-year political career to banning the British slave trade. Alas, a lot of people watching \u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d Michael Apted\u2019s just-released film, may get the impression\u2013perhaps deliberately fostered by Mr. Apted\u2013that Wilberforce was a mostly secular humanitarian whose main passion was not Christian faith but politics and social justice. Along the way, they may also get the impression that the hymn \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d is no more than an uplifting piece of music that sounds especially rousing on the bagpipes.<\/p>\n

In fact, William Wilberforce was driven by a version of Christianity that today would be derided as \u201cfundamentalist.\u201d One of his sons, sharing his father\u2019s outlook, was the Anglican bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who wrote a passionate critique of \u201cThe Origin of the Species,\u201d arguing that Darwin\u2019s then-new theory could not fully account for the emergence of human beings. William Wilberforce himself, as a student at Cambridge University in the 1770s and as a young member of Parliament soon after, had no more than a nominal sense of faith. Then, in 1785, he began reading evangelical treatises and underwent what he called \u201cthe Great Change,\u201d almost dropping out of politics to study for the ministry until friends persuaded him that he could do more good where he was.<\/p>\n

And he did a great deal of good, as Mr. Apted\u2019s movie shows. His relentless campaign eventually led Parliament to ban the slave trade, in 1807, and to pass a law shortly after his death in 1833, making the entire institution of slavery illegal. But it is impossible to understand Wilberforce\u2019s long antislavery campaign without seeing it as part of a larger Christian impulse. The man who prodded Parliament so famously also wrote theological tracts, sponsored missionary and charitable works, and fought for what he called the \u201creformation of manners,\u201d a campaign against vice. This is the Wilberforce that Mr. Apted has played down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Second, Manohla Dargis writes in The New York Times<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d a prettified take on the life and times of the 18th-century reformer William Wilberforce, carries a strong whiff of piety. It isn\u2019t a bad smell; there are notes of roses and treacle in the mix, but also elements of sweat and pain. Wilberforce, born in 1759, was an abolitionist for much of his adult life and helped bring about the end of the slave trade in the British Empire and then slavery itself. He was an evangelical Christian and social conservative who rallied for animal rights and against trade unions, which makes him a tough nut to crack. It\u2019s no wonder he makes a first-rate movie saint.<\/p>\n

Serious-minded and squeaky clean, \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d is an imperfect look at an imperfect soul. It has been confidently directed by Michael Apted, who invests Wilberforce\u2019s fight with a strong sense of conviction, and written by Steven Knight, whose other credits include \u201cDirty Pretty Things.\u201d The overall effect is part BBC-style biography, part Hollywood-like hagiography, and generally pleasing and often moving, even when the story wobbles off the historical rails or becomes bogged down in dopey romance. Wilberforce often comes across as too good to be true, which may be why the fine Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, doubtless with the encouragement of his socially minded director, plays him with a hint of madness in his eyes. . . .<\/p>\n

Biographical films are generally tricky, since the on-screen personality rarely matches the real one; they\u2019re even trickier when the subject is shrouded in misty time and debate. In some quarters, \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d will succeed better as a diversion than as a nuanced record of Wilberforce\u2019s life. Historians have been divided on his legacy, with one damning him as \u201cthe mouthpiece of the party of order and of the business world.\u201d A contemporary asked Wilberforce, after he introduced a law that set back the cause of trade unions, why he paid more attention to African slaves than to Britain\u2019s working poor, whose interests he probably helped obstruct for years. Religious writers, not surprisingly, are more charitably disposed toward him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s equally unsurprising that the filmmakers don\u2019t address these sharper criticisms. The film\u2019s Wilberforce is a fanatic, a true believer, a crusader, a man of action and God, of stirring principle and tireless will. He\u2019s at once pure and seductive, a dashing, romantic figure with a long black coat who talks to God while lying in his garden and keeps rabbits for pets. This matinee idol version might be wildly simplistic, even borderline caricature, but there is also something unfailingly attractive about a film character so wholly devoted to good. The screenplay doesn\u2019t poke into the nature of that good \u2014 whether Wilberforce\u2019s fight against slavery was truly selfless or flattered a sense of moral superiority \u2014 but it does make you think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both critiques agree that the film has \u201cprettified\u201d the historical Wilberforce, but they seem to disagree on the question of how the film treats Wilberforce\u2019s religion. The religious writer seems to think the film has hidden Wilberforce\u2019s more \u201cfundamentalist\u201d side and could stand to include more of the religious stuff, while the secular writer seems to think the character is a \u201cfanatic\u201d and the film may have enough religion as it is thank you very much.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been away from the computer for at least 40 hours, so I\u2019ve got a lot of catching up to do. In the meantime, I just want to note two comments on Amazing Grace, a film which was #10 in \u201cNorth America\u201d this past weekend, though it does not come to Canada for almost four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs he a "fundamentalist"? a "fanatic"? or...?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've been away from the computer for at least 40 hours, so I've got a lot of catching up to do.In the meantime, I just want to note two comments on\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/02\/is-he-a-fundamentalist-a-fanatic-or.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is he a "fundamentalist"? a "fanatic"? or...?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've been away from the computer for at least 40 hours, so I've got a lot of catching up to do.In the meantime, I just want to note two comments on\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/02\/is-he-a-fundamentalist-a-fanatic-or.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-26T10:35:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/x\/blogger\/7991\/933\/400\/652633\/amazinggrace3.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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