Movie review: Lincoln

A rumor is currently doing the rounds that U.S. President Barack Obama invited a number of members of Congress to join him for a screening of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln when it was released stateside in November. Among those he invited were congressional Republicans, but not a single representative of the Grand Old Party showed up.

It's easy to see why, because although Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, may have done their utmost to recreate in stunning detail the machinations of the legislative branch and its conflict with the executive, the film contains numerous moments that are thinly veiled indictments of the current batch of House and Senate Republicans, notorious for their inflexibility and unwillingness to recognize the equality of all the country's citizens.

Despite simply being named Lincoln, the film focuses on a small stretch of four months starting in January 1865 and ending in April of that year, the two intertwined storylines centering on the possibility of ending the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. These four months were some of the most important of Abraham Lincoln's presidency. Not only did it mark the end of his first term in office and the start of his second, but it brought the two main issues of the time, mentioned above, to a final conclusion.

One can easily and without any cynicism look at the political environment of the time and think that Washington, D.C. hasn't changed all that much. The Republican and the Democratic parties are still on either side of the aisle, hurling verbal stink bombs at each other over a difference in ideology. The interesting thing, however, is that, at this point in history, the parties' ideologies were quite different from (if not the exact opposite of) what they are today.

At the time, Lincoln, a Republican, fought hard to get the 13th Amendment passed and abolish slavery forever. His Republican Party was mostly in favor of this piece of legislation, and it was the Democrats, made up of many Southerners (yes, once upon a time the South was a Democratic bastion) who made their fortunes through slavery and plantations and were prepared to fight to the death of the country to maintain the status quo. That is how the Civil War broke out fewer than 40 days after the inauguration of Lincoln, an avowed abolitionist, in 1865.

Although our last issue accompanied the release of Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino's take on the Western, set in the South in 1858 and with slavery as a running theme, Lincoln is quite a different kettle of fish, and not just because it is mostly true. Spielberg is known for his sentimental moments, but this film has a somber quality, as is made clear by almost any frame. Using only natural light, the film is visually quite dark when scenes take place inside a building, but obviously the images are a reflection of the story itself, in which the president, his back against the wall, equipped with only his conscience and his intelligence to fight the anti-abolitionist Democrats and Southerners, has to maneuver, massage and make deals to arrive at a point where he keeps the big promise of his first term: to end slavery once and for all.

The four months depicted in the film serve as a kind of distillation of the character of this man whose face is one of only four carved on Mount Rushmore, and, in the lead role, Daniel Day-Lewis has received just praise for his performance as the 16th president. Strong and calm, a man who holds the highest office but who gets down on his knees to stoke the fireplace in his study (a very suitable visual metaphor for his involvement in the ultimate passage of the amendment), his is a Lincoln that is seared into the mind of the viewer.

As his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, Sally Field is a force to be reckoned with, a woman alternately described by her husband as mad and misunderstood, she often says what he only thinks, and thereby acts as a very dramatic co-lead.

It would be impossible to focus on all the emotions and conflicts of the members of Congress, and the film doesn't attempt to do that; instead, the way in which Lincoln acts the role of a skilled politician, despite his physical awkwardness, his slightly high-pitched voice and his controversial stance on equality, is as surprising as it is dramatically effective.

Sometimes, the wheels of justice grind slowly, but this film points out the political balancing act having to choose between passage of a law that would ban slavery and the ending of a civil war that has cost many lives and is fought precisely because the country is divided on a single issue.

Abraham Lincoln is revealed to be a highly intelligent president aware of the politics but realizing, as all good negotiators do, that he is dealing with people who have certain interests, and that his office gives him the power to meet some of those interests in order to move the country forward and make it take the first step toward equality for its citizens.

André Crous can be reached at
acrous@praguepost.com