Lincoln

"Shall We Stop This Bleeding?"

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln takes on a terrific challenge: creating a realistic portrayal of one of the most highly regarded, universally known men in the history of the world. Considering other films about Presidents, such as Frost/Nixon or W., we have comparably little information on Abraham Lincoln. We don't have recorded audio/visual footage of him. No filmed interviews. Nothing that depicts his speech, physicality, or likewise. We have written accounts of him, etc. but things of such ilk are never entirely objective. We do have some facts, of course; he was born in Kentucky, lived in Illinois and Indiana, had little formal education, etc, etc.

The film itself wisely concerns not the entire scope of Lincoln's presidency, but focuses on the last few months of his life and his attempts to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Knowing that the Civil War will soon come to a close, Lincoln wants to pass this Amendment before it does, fearing that once the war has ended, abolishment of slavery will never come to be.

Of course, we all know that Lincoln is indeed successful in passing this Amendment, and the film understands this. It chooses to concentrate on Lincoln the man, and how he passed the Amendment, which is where the screenplay by Tony Kushner and the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis truly shine.  Day-Lewis (better known as the best living actor) portrays Lincoln as a calm, confident, shrewd, ingenious human being and a realistic politician. He himself admits that he had little formal education, but he read whatever he could, and was clearly very intelligent - "once it's in there, it stayed," referring to the books he'd read. He would often tell stories, not as diversion, but as parables for the issues currently at hand. He would tell the story of Ethan Allen and a portrait of George Washington in a watercloset. Or of Euclid's axioms, in which he points out that two-thousand years ago it was "self-evident" that if two things are equal to one, they are also equal to each other. He was a man of great understanding for human nature.

Are his methods of passing the Amendment entirely honest in the way that most people would have expected them to be? Not at all. He did what he had to do to ensure a better fate for the thousands in bondage, and the millions unborn who would suffer the same fate.

Day-Lewis, as usual, is astonishing in his performance; not once did I feel like I wasn't watching Abraham Lincoln. He is tall, towering above others in stature, yet so humble his personality stands eye-to-eye with theirs. He is calm, slow-moving, considerate; always appearing weary and tired, but also as though he never stops thinking. Theodore Roosevelt popularized the "Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick" ideology, but I've never seen that embodiment better before than I have in Lincoln.

The supporting cast is likewise excellent, with a plethora of established names, from Sally Field, to Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jackie Earle Haley, Hal Holbrook, David Strathairn, Walton Goggins, John Hawkes, James Spader, among others. Particular stand-outs are Sally Field, as Mary Todd Lincoln, and Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. Both will likely go on to receive Academy Award nominations, deservedly so.

This is the best film Spielberg has made since Saving Private Ryan. It is an earnest, realistic, tactful observation of a highly regarded man who changed history. It depicts the politics of 1865 as not so terribly different from 2012; Lincoln did what he had to do to get the job done, earning him a place as one of the most revered men in history. More so, this is a highly topical film; a film for our time. This is one of the most well-acted and technically superb films of this year. This is a brilliant study of a humble giant.

****/****