A House Divided ...

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2012)

Steven Spielberg gives us a well rounded story regarding the passage of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. It's focus is predominantly President Lincoln but Spielberg gives us a view into the politics and the performers that facilitated it's passage. He gives us a Lincoln who seems to understand the contradictions of his presidency... he wants equality, but used his war powers to declare martial law and suspend ha beaus corpus. This is more of a political drama then a morality play - the supporters of slavery(Democrats)are not portrayed as evil, vile or villainous.
Spielberg also gives us a caring family man who dearly loves his sons and his wife, though he is at his ends because of her desperate longing for their son Willie who died in the White House from typhoid at 12. Sally Field should be nominated, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones probably will be as well. The film is a bit 'stagey' at times, but that wears off - at 150 minutes, it passes quickly given all the talking and little 'action'. Spielberg avoids many of his more manipulative tricks (except maybe at the very beginning when Lincoln is talking to 2 black soldiers, then 2 white soldiers) to give us a pretty direct telling of this story - based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin book "Team of Rivals".