A Really, Bo Really! Big Hollywood Blockbuster Epic about parliamentary procedures.

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2013)

Like many in the UK, this reviewer puts aside Friday afternoon, to help decide, what to see next at the cinema.
Two films out just now deal with the issue of slavery. One is 'Django'. For me the person who made that film rates as highly as Welles. Yes! His last film, chronologically speaking, that I liked, was 'Jackie Brown'. That choice was discarded.
Listening to an interview with Steven Spielberg, decided for me, what to watch. Nothing else was considered or even looked for. Spielberg said that he had wanted to make the film for about a decade, that he thought only Daniel Day-Lewis could play the lead role, he was the only choice, and that it had taken a decade to get him on board for the project. Seeing the film you realize why. DDL is the living embodiment of Abraham Lincoln. The resemblance is uncanny.
A large audience, not young people, but a more mature, knowledgeable and thoughtful audience, sat in a large hall, to see this film. A film which is not an action film or a war film, but is a film about history and politics.
It tells the story of a place called the United States of America, but one very different from the one we know. In this USA, civil-war has been raging for four years, a long bloody war. The issue at the core of this war is that of slavery. Lincoln is the President. He is a war-time leader. He is a Republican. In this USA, the Republicans are on the left, their support is in the north in the big urban centres and they tend to support the abolition of slavery. The Democrat Party support is rural, is in the south, is King Cotton, and thus is more supportive of retaining slavery.
In other ways, this USA is also very different. It is a very primitive society compared to today, certainly in communications. The politics too is somewhat different to today. It is much more face-to-face. More up close and personal. More raw and immediate. The film concentrates on the Capitol, but small-town politics always intrudes too. Perhaps this is like it still is in small towns everywhere or perhaps how it was in Athens and Rome long ago.
The film is essentially about President Lincoln at this time as he deals with the issues of slavery and the war, and how he goes about his business. We see more of him than this however. We see Lincoln the family man, we also see a plain-speaking folksy man at home in small-town America, at home talking to the ordinary people, and the exalted. Lincoln the storyteller. Little is seen and heard of his oratory, what there is, is enough. What is seen clearly is Lincoln the lawyer. The film demonstrates why the profession of lawyer has always been intertwined with politics from the earliest days. Clearly there was no one better than Lincoln at using his lawyer's mind to weigh the argument, to define precisely, and to take what has been said and to balance that with what needs to be done.
The central part of the film deals with the attempt to try to abolish slavery while the war itself is still raging. All of the different, and competing, arguments are heard as the issue is debated. The film has an all-star cast. DDL is great. He is Lincoln. The film is very emotional, but perhaps the most moving, most noble and most poignant scenes were those with Tommy Lee Jones. He plays an extremist, unswerving in his views, who plans and plots to try to achieve his objective.
This heavy-on-the-mayo, epic, Hollywood, blockbuster-film is a must see for all constitutional, historical and political anoraks everywhere. After the first few minutes the film is gripping. It would be churlish to mark this film down for the first five minutes, hence it has to be a 10/10.