Lincoln (Film Review)

[selenak]

Lincoln started in my part of the world, while Les Mis still hasn't hit the German cinemas yet. So I got to watch at least one more Oscar potential before the event.

Impressions: I see what ponygirl2000 meant when she wrote it feels at times like attending the service of a religion one isn't a member of. Paradoxically it's also one of the more restrained Spielbergs, and everyone praising Kushner's script and Spielberg's direction for making a pure dialogue piece (the brief opening battle scene excempted) about the political process very compelling is right. But every now and then, Spielberg and his director of photography, Kamisnki, just can't resist it: framing Lincoln in silhouette or three thirds profile against the light, or letting the music swell to indicate we're having A Moment Of History here. (And this is something the film really could have done without. Last year around this time, I watched the John Adams miniseries, which managed to tell history and make the various historical figures three dimensional but did not give into what I'd call the silhouette temptation; I don't recall Adams (or Jefferson, or Washington for that matter) ever being photographed as if they're about to be sculpted in it.)

Daniel Day-Lewis, though, totally deserves his nomination and stays human throughout; intelligent good guys are, imo, harder to play and make charismatic than flamboyant villains, but he pulls it off, andis also able to convey great warmth, which isn't the case in many of the other roles I've seen him in. (But then he always disappears into the part.) Who also amazed me, not least because I haven't seen many reviews point her out, was Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. In fact, all the Lincoln and Mary scenes save the last one were what felt the most Kushnerian and least Spielbergian attributes of the film to me; Tony Kushner is great at troubled relationships and marriages where people know each other too well not to hit exactly where it hurts and have gnawed each other raw, and yet also support and get each other, and are each their own person. Going in, I was afraid we'd get some "...and his wife is hysterical, yet one more burden on the great man" type of story, but no. Far more complicated. And their argument scene where Lincoln loses it and threatens her with the madhouse and her response were particularly stunning; Sally Field in said scene gives one of the "who'd have thought you have it in you?" type of performances that makes me reevaluate her as an actress. (Alas, Tony Kushner can't resist lampshading and gives us a last scene shortly before Lincoln's death where Lincoln and Mary have an exchange on how you can't understand him if you don't also take his marriage into account. WE GOT THE POINT WITHOUT THAT, TONY, DAMM IT.)

All the political wheeling and dealing in order to get the 13th amendment through was news to my non-American self, and as I said, I did find it very interesting to watch; obvious West Wing comparisons I've seen in not a few reviews are obvious. One criticism more in lj world than in newspaper reviews was that for a film centred around the law that makes slavery illegal, centring it on Lincoln and the various Republican and Democrat politicians debating meant the slaves (and former slaves) in question were shown only in a passive role. Which is true, though Spielberg and Kushner try to amend it somewhat with the two black soldiers whom we see fighting at the very start of the film and who then are shown in conversation with Lincoln, definitely not as passive; one of them questions the President, and both quote parts of a crucial speech of his at him. There is also Mary's friend, Mrs. Keckler (spelling?), a former slave, whom we see responding to the issue throughout the film. Still, it's undoubtedly true this is a film about the white lawgivers, not the black subjects of said law.

In conclusion: I'm glad I've seen it, but I don't have the urge to rewatch. I will, however, finally get to a book that's been on my reading list for eons - Barbara Hambly's novel about Mary Todd Lincoln.

Comments

[likeadeuce]

All the political wheeling and dealing in order to get the 13th amendment through was news to my non-American self, and as I said, I did find it very interesting to watch

It's not a well-known episode here, either. That is, I know it's covered in a chapter of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals which is a very popular nonfiction history book probably around the level of McCullough's Adams -- but, if one hasn't gotten around to reading that yet (and I haven't) it's not a part of Lincoln's career that even most students of American history are likely to be conversant with (whereas Lincoln's early career, his election, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural, the Emancipation proclamation, various conflicts with the Union generals would be well known.) So I think that episode was picked at least in part because it's something the film could come at fairly fresh.

*I mean, most casual students -- obviously people who studied Lincoln or that era in depth would be familiar.

Disclaimer, I have not seen the film either; I sort of vaguely meant to read the Goodwin book first but it doesn't look like that's happening.

[selenak]

Ah, then the general audience on both sides of the Atlantic would be on about the same level of spoilers about the amendment plot. :) Though:

whereas Lincoln's early career, his election, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural, the Emancipation proclamation, various conflicts with the Union generals would be well known.

Here, on the other hand, you definitely have the advantage. I think all that's covered about Lincoln in German school is that he was the President who proclaimed Emancipation (but not the words with which he did it), the one during the Civil War, and that he got killed by an actor. (His time period is competing with Bismarck creating the Second Empire. Undoubtedly Lincoln was the better man, but alas Bismarck is the homeboy, so Bismarck in school it was.) And that's about it. Anything else I knew about him before watching the film, I learned via general osmosis when visiting the US, reading American books and newspapers etc.

[likeadeuce]

Yes, Lincoln lore in general is quite well-known. And I should say that the fact that the 13th amendment *was passed* is general knowledge -- or at least, we know that a constitutional amendment freed the slaves and granted voting rights and equal protection regardless of race; it's the detail that massive political finagling would have been required that many Americans find surprising -- since it's assumed the slaves already WERE freed by the Emancipation proclamation (not exactly true, that only freed slaves in rebellious states who didn't recognize it anyway -- some slave states were still in the union), and that of course we assume that would continue and eventually apply to all states since that was the point of the war. But clearly it was more complicated than that.

(And I can't claim to know ANYTHING about Bismarck in return aside for vague notions of 19th century nationalism and 'blood & iron'; otherwise I'm afraid we don't pay much attention to Germany until the Kaiser!)

[sabra_n]

The thing that bugged about the two black servants in the White House and the way that they were depicted is that they were actual people - William Slade and Elizabeth Keckley - and IRL they were active in Washington, D.C.'s ex-slave community and abolitionist movement. In other words, they were actors, not just re-actors to the movements of the white politicians around them. Which is why Lincoln's conversation with Mrs. Keckley didn't exactly sit right.

On the other hand, the black soldiers in the beginning were awesome, awesome, awesome. The movie just should have kept that up with Slade and Keckley, and maybe avoided the fakeout with Thaddeus Stevens, which made it seem like a) his partner was literally receiving emancipation as a gift from him, and b) that he was an abolitionist just for her sake, when in fact he was one before he met her.

[selenak]

I didn't think Stevens became an abolitionist just for his partner's sake, despite not knowing anything about him, but I agree that there is nothing in the film to contradict that impression if one draws it. Also agreed that both William Slade and Elizabeth Keckley could have easily been written as active instead of passive - just one or two meetings of the black abolitionists with them included, debating the amendment, would have done the trick.

[sabra_n]

Yeah, a moment with Frederick Douglass wouldn't have been out of place, but even within the constraints of the screenplay as it stands they could have done better.

[wychwood]

Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic had a bunch of really interesting discussion about the film when it came out in the US - at the moment his first post on it is back here and then there's a whole stack on the page before. The one I found most interesting was probably on "Lincoln" as radical art; he also links to Kate Masur's criticism of the film, which I found super-depressing to read, because of what it says about the extent to which it's not just that the black characters are shown as being passive, but that that is explicitly counter-factual; it actually *erases* their real historical activities in some places.

I don't know; I think it's a really difficult thing to discuss. And, sadly, I think Coates is right to point out how radical it still is, in US cinema terms, in the way it addresses the US Civil War. A low bar, but one we're still failing to jump far too much of the time...

[selenak]

Thank you for all the links, which make fascinating reading.