Lincoln Review: Persistently Picturesque Politics

Daniel-Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln
(DreamWorks II Distribution Co.)

I had a professor at university who would often preface screenings of historical films by saying that movies often say more about the times in which they were made than the times they are about. This is a concept that can be wholly applied to Lincoln. Released just weeks after the re-election of Barack Obama, Stephen Spielberg’s historical drama about the 16^th president of the United States is particularly timely considering the highly contested election the country recently experienced. Scenes of battling political factions, bribery and verbal lashings between the republican and democratic parties will bring back not-so distant memories for many viewers. And in an era where every month was Movember, there is no shortage of nineteenth-century facial hair on the faces of the film’s largely male cast.

Based partly on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s novel “Team of Rivals”, the film is focuses on Lincoln’s (Daniel-Day Lewis) struggle to pass the 13^th Amendment while in the midst of the Civil War. His aim to pass the amendment to abolish slavery often stood in conflict with a desire to end the war and make peace with the Southern states. These competing ideals are made literal by the many advisers competing for Lincoln’s attention, most notably his Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) and the amendment’s author Thaddeus Stephens (Tommy-Lee Jones).  Also competing for the president’s attention are his emotionally unstable wife, Mary-Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) and his quarter-life crisis ridden son Robert (Joseph-Gordon Levitt).

The standout of the piece is, unsurprisingly, Day-Lewis’ uncanny embodiment of the president. The star plays Lincoln with a restrained gentility – a man whose power lay in his ability to command a room with calm dignity. But the heavy cadence by which he carried himself betrayed the world-weariness of the immense task that lay before him, but to which he was tirelessly committed.

The remainder of the cast (a hefty slate of character actors) do a solid job, only speckled by a few misses. Tommy-Lee Jones infuses a good helping of his signature churl as the gruff, determined Thaddeus Stevens. James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson provide welcome comic relief in the film as a trio of aides trying to hustle democratic votes for the amendment.

The film stumbles when it shifts to Lincoln’s personal life. Sally Field’s performance as Mary-Todd Lincoln feels strained, but she is not helped by a script that restricts the first lady to a series of hysterical emotional outbursts and needy pleadings. Joseph-Gordon Levitt’s performance echoes shades of Paul Dano in There Will be Blood as a younger actor crushed by the sheer weight and charisma of Day-Lewis.

I suspect that the most lasting value of the film will be as an educational tool. As a Canadian outsider who knows very little about a very complex and distant time in American politics, I learned a lot from Lincoln. Spielberg does a good job of making scenes of dry constitutional discussion absorbing. In what is largely a dialogue driven movie, Lincoln has an evocative visual style that makes smoky back-room political deliberations seem artfully poignant.

The film is also valuable for elucidating the immense struggle of abolishing slavery. It portrays the mountain of entrenched racial prejudice that abolitionists faced. One a personal level, Lincoln affirms a commitment to one’s ideals in the face of derision. But more significantly, as a portrayal of an iconic time in US history, the film upholds that America is a nation of progress. It is no accident that the film is bookmarked by various readings of the Gettysburg Address at the beginning by soldiers reciting the speech to Lincoln and at the end a scene of Abe reading the speech itself.  Like the Gettysburg address, Lincoln promotes a distinctive brand of US optimism that believes in the democratic process and the positive change it can bring. It is a sentiment that Americans cling to as much today as they did in 1864.

Rating: 4/5