The Film "Amazing Grace"

I had purchased the DVD of the 2006 film Amazing Grace several months ago, but Catherine and I just got around to watching it this evening. I hope you have all seen it; it is an incredibly moving account of the power of faith to challenge commerce head-on, persevere, and ultimately triumph. Albert FInney's cameo as John Newton, the former captain of a slave ship who wrote the hymn, is superb. And Michael Gambon (Dumbledore in the later Harry Potter films) portrays MP Charles Fox beautifully.

As a musicologist, my primary quibble is with the use of the tune New Britain when the hymn is sung. No evidence exists of the association of "Amazing Grace" with this tune until the 1830s, long after the period of the film. In a film that went to great lengths to insure historical accuracy in so many other areas, this musical lapse is puzzling. Perhaps it was the feeling that words and tune were so indelibly associated with the public who would be seeing the film that the anachronism could be accepted.

But this takes away little from the power of this important statement. For any of us who may doubt the power of faith to change things, the story told in Amazing Grace is a pep talk.