Bad means for a good cause

Rating: 8/10 (26 February 2013)

This movie is not a biography of Abraham Lincoln. It elapses only during the last years of his life in the course of the Civil War and the political fight to obtain the approval of the 13th amendment to the Constitution which would end up slavery. The 2/3 majority necessary to reach that approval in the House of Representatives is finally got through bribery and corruption of the marginal few members still needed to make those 2/3 and that is widely shown in the movie through a succession of scenes and sequences of confrontation between partisans and adversaries of the amendment. Bad means for a just cause of course. These scenes, dialogues, speeches, disputes and discussions are shown with great realism and force and occupy the largest part of the movie which leads some viewers to consider that part very dull. On the contrary I think they are very important to make us understand what is really going on and are also well shown and acted. Of course the real motives for the north to wage a war against the south were not so humanitarian (notwithstanding President Lincoln's humanitarian personal motives). We don't see easily that the Federals would wage such a bloody war against the Confederates with the sole purpose of getting the slaves emancipated in the south. There were economical motives behind it such as the competition between the industrial north and the agricultural south whose advantage was precisely the cheap slave labour which had then to be suppressed to enhance northern economic superiority. The performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is wonderful, one of the best movie performances I have ever seen. All the other performers do their job very well and are extremely well chosen and made up. All the sceneries, dresses and attires create a real and true atmosphere of the epoch. It is undoubtedly one of the best 2012 movies.