Michael Apted directs this stirring portrait of British parliamentarian and abolitionist William Wilberforce, whose struggle against the British slave trade in the House of Commons endured 20 years of setbacks and debilitating illness before the trade was finally abolished in 1807. The film begins half-way through Wilberforce’s fight, after he has just suffered another demoralizing defeat in the House and is convalescing at his cousin’s estate while he suffers through yet another episode of his recurrent battle with gout. His introduction to the young abolitionist Barbara Spooner (and soon-to-be Mrs. Wilberforce) prompts a lengthy conversation with her and several flashbacks to the early part of his career. Most notable is Wilberforce’s conversion to a full-bodied Christianity as a young parliamentarian that prompts an internal debate over whether he should lead the life of a political activist or do the work of God. A group of abolitionists to whom his good friend and future prime minister William Pitt introduces him humbly suggests he can do both. Wilberforce’s devotion to God and the two objects He has set before him, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners, drives him through the rest of his life and serves as an effective model for principled, dedicated political engagement. (Just three days before Wilberforce’s death in 1833, Parliament abolishes slavery throughout the United Kingdom.) Albert Finney delivers a powerful performance in his limited screen time as the great John Newton, the slave trader-turned-preacher and mentor to Wilberforce who authored the famous title song.