A great historical film

Rating: 9/10 (19 January 2014)

For his biopic "Lincoln," rather than try to cram a man's entire life into a two-and-a-half-hour running time, Steven Spielberg has wisely chosen to keep the focus circumscribed and narrow: on the winter of 1865, four years into the Civil War, as the President works to secure passage of the highly controversial 13th Amendment, which, when ratified, will abolish slavery as an institution in the United States for all time to come. Lincoln's main hope is to convince a skeptical and still highly racist public that such a move is essential to bringing an end to a war that has already claimed 600,000 of their young men's lives. The obstacles that remain are the Democrats in Congress who are universally opposed to such a move and many Republicans who think this constitutional amendment may well pave the way to universal suffrage, with not just blacks but women ultimately being given the right to vote. Lincoln's major hope is to convince a sufficient number of lame duck Democrats to come over to his side, while not allowing the amendment's passage to throw a monkey wrench into any possibility of surrender on the part of the Confederacy.
A man of both faith and reason, pragmatism and passion, Lincoln knew that he stood on the threshold of history, that he needed to act decisively and at that very moment to wipe out the scourge of slavery that, since the young nation's inception, had brought shame and evil to a republic ostensibly founded on the concept that all men are created equal.
The movie beautifully captures Lincoln as a man bowed down by the burden of his position and the times in which he not only lived but played so vital a role in shaping, a brilliant but self-effacing man, keenly cognizant of his humble beginnings, as ready to lend an ear to the lowliest foot soldier or telegraph operator as to the greatest general or politician - indeed more eager in some cases, for he knew that the common man often had more honesty in his answer and wisdom in his soul than the great one.
This is the man whom screenwriter Tony Kushner and author Doris Kearns Goodwin, upon whose book "Team of Rivals" the movie is based, present to the audience.
But that isn't all. The movie also functions as both a fascinating look into the events of the time and as an illustration of how even the noblest advances in human history have often arisen out of a messy combination of moral compromise and shady back-room deal-making. The most obvious embodiment of that is Thaddeus Stephens (played with solid conviction and a sly self-awareness by Tommy Lee Jones), a Republican Congressman who has to weigh his strong abolitionist views against the pragmatic need to get things right.
The script encompasses Lincoln's domestic circle as well, as it explores the complex relationship between Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd (Sally Field), a brutally frank, sharp-tongued woman frequently brought low by debilitating migraines and steeped in grief over the loss of their young son, Todd, a few years back. We also see the effect of all this on the Lincolns' oldest son, Robert (Joseph Gordon- Levitt), who is forced to live in the shadow of a great man, convinced he will never be able to live at peace with himself unless he is allowed to fight alongside all the other boys of his age on the field of battle.
A host of familiar faces - David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, Walter Goggins, James Spader, S. Epatha Merkerson, among them - flesh out the canvas. And what a glorious canvas it turns out to be, thanks to meticulous set decoration and costume design as well as cinematography by the great Janusz Kaminski that filters the action through duskily-lit interiors and near-sepia-toned exteriors.
Of course, "Lincoln" would not be the triumph it is without the exemplary performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, who manages to turn a towering figure of history into a recognizable human being. Stoop-shouldered and slow of speech and motion, Day-Lewis conveys the quiet gravity that allows us to understand just how this one man could command the respect of so many of the people of his time and, in so doing, move mountains.
All involved have made "Lincoln" a portrait worthy of its subject.