Lincoln

Happy President’s Day everyone! Today, I would like to honor my personal favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. And what better way to do that then by taking a look at Steven Spielberg’s 2012 historically accurate masterpiece, “Lincoln.”

The late Roger Ebert said, “I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. He had less than a year of formal education and taught himself through his hungry reading of great books. I still recall from a childhood book the image of him taking a piece of charcoal and working out mathematics by writing on the back of a shovel.”

Lincoln lacked social polish but he had a vast amount of knowledge on human nature and was smart in that area. The trademark of this great President, played so powerfully by the great Daniel Day-Lewis, is calm self-confidence, patience and an eagerness to play politics in a realistic way. The film looks at the final months of Lincoln’s life, including the passage of the 13^th Amendment that ended slavery, the surrender of the Confederacy and his assassination. Rarely has a film focused really carefully to the details on the politics.

Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong, but he also thought the 13^th Amendment was an effort in cutting away the financial establishments of the Confederacy. In this film, the passage from the 13^th Amendment is guided by William Seward, played by David Strathairn, his secretary of state, and by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, the most powerful abolitionist in the House. Any performance in this movie does not depend on self-conscious histrionics. Particularly, Jones plays a crafty weirdo with some secret hiding areas in his heart.

The capital city of Washington is portrayed in this film as a vicious gathering of politicians on the make. The images by Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s frequent cinematographer, use earth tones and muted indoor lighting. Ebert mentioned, “The White House is less a temple of state than a gathering place for wheelers and dealers. This ambience reflects the descriptions in Gore Vidal's historical novel "Lincoln," although the political and personal details in Tony Kushner's concise, revealing dialogue is based on "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book is well-titled.” The film is not about an icon of history, but about a President who was disrespected by some of his political opponents as (Ebert puts it) “just a hayseed from the backwoods.”

Ebert says, “Lincoln is not above political vote buying. He offers jobs, promotions, titles and pork barrel spending.” He isn’t even slightly unenthusiastic to spend the low-handed strategies of his chief negotiators (Tim Blake Nelson, James Spader, and John Hawkes). That’s how the game is played, and indeed we may be reminded of the arm-bending used to pass the civil rights legislation by Lyndon B. Johnson, the subject of another biography by Goodwin.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who has a fix on an Oscar nomination, changes Lincoln. He is soft-spoken, a little bent, tired after the years of war, concerned about having anymore soldiers die. He communicates through stories and tales. At his side is his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, played by the very lovely Sally Field (typically sturdy and spunky), who is sometimes seen as a social climber but here is focused as wife and mother. She has already lost one son in the war and is afraid of losing another. Their other son, Robert Todd Lincoln, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, refuses the benefits of the family.

There are some battlefields in “Lincoln” but the only battle scene is at the opening, when the words of the Gettysburg Address are spoken with the greatest possible impact, and not by Lincoln. Kushner also smoothly merges the wording of the 13^th Amendment into the film without making it sound like a mandatory history lesson.

The film ends soon after Lincoln’s assassination. I would assume that audiences would want that in the movie. There is an earlier shot, when it could have ended, of President Lincoln walking away from the camera after his amendment had been passed. The rest belongs to history.

In the end, go see the movie, it’s a fantastic movie. You will love Spielberg for getting this film very accurate, and it’s appropriate for today. I hope you enjoyed my review and stay tuned for this Friday for the third entry of my “Black History Month Movie Reviews.”