LINCOLN (2012)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Note: This review is reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine, who have just given me my own movie review column. Review at this marvelous magazine can be found here.
Note: This review is reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine, who have just given me my own movie review column. Review at this marvelous magazine can be found here.
In the opening moments of "Lincoln," the Civil War is being fought with the soldiers drenched in rain and muddy waters, echoing Orson Welles' own "Chimes at Midnight" that showed the rough and clumsy nature of war. President Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) is first seen talking to the troops, listening to their half-remembered memories of the President's Gettysburg Address. The black soldiers are hoping for equality and respect in fighting the war, and Lincoln talks to them with humorous asides about his barber. What is especially wonderful about these opening scenes is that it shows Lincoln's human side and his penchant for telling jokes and stories from the past - he is not simply a stoic statue that we look up to in wonder. As the film progresses, we see a Lincoln arguing with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln (a fierce and unrelenting Sally Field that we haven't seen since "Norma Rae"), over the heartbreak over their young son's death and the issue of their eldest son's wish to fight in the war. Abe Lincoln even threatens to throw Mary back in the madhouse if she expresses more grief, particularly over their eldest and his chances of survival in the brutal war.
The film truly delves into the efforts by Lincoln and his reluctant cabinet to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, a piece of legislation designed to end slavery. Varied opinions and points-of-view are expressed, notably by Lincoln's own Secretary of State Seward (David Strathairn) who sees the end of war as the only way to end slavery. Most of Lincoln's other rivals and constituents see the President as a dictator, a conqueror of questionable moral repute when it comes to his assertion that black people are equal to whites. How dare he? The sharp and acid-tongued Pennsylvania abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (a force-of-nature performance by Tommy Lee Jones) has worked on this amendment all his life, and finds that equality under the law as opposed to equality without it merits hopeful unanimous votes. Stevens' rousing speech delivers in ways that only Spielberg and the thunderous score by John Williams can help amplify, to make the audience see the value of equality.
If that isn't enough, we get more backroom intrigue with a quietly assured performance by Jackie Earle Haley as Alexander Stephens, the leader of the Confederate delegation who worries about the future of the South; James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson and John Hawkes as lobbyists who pressure opponents to the amendment to vote for it; Lt. Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris) who notices that Lincoln has aged at least a decade within a couple of years; Hal Holbrook as the Republican founder Preston Blair who opposes slavery and is weary of Radical Republicans; Gloria Reuben as former slave Elizabeth Keckley who was Mary Lincoln's confidante and seamstress, and lastly Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's eldest son who insists on joining the war effort despite witnessing severed limbs carted away to a landfill.
"Lincoln" is not an expansive film biography of the 16th President - those have been done on TV and in the early days of Henry Fonda - but rather it focuses on the minutiae of passing a historic piece of legislation (based on a fraction of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, "Team of Rivals," the film focuses on the last four months of the President's life). The film doesn't shy away from the naysayers of this amendment (most memorable and most thrillingly alive opponent is Lee Pace as Fernando Wood, a Democratic Congressman in verbal duels with Thaddeus) and it doesn't shy away from the emotional toll placed on the Great Emancipator. It shows the hardships involved with getting votes to right a moral wrong that festered in the United States for far too long. Daniel Day-Lewis, pitch perfect in every regard, towers above all to delineate that political struggle. Spielberg's "Lincoln" is mandatory viewing - a sensational American classic.
