Absolute historical masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2013)

Is That a saga or is it history ? We can ask the question and wonder. The inspiration from Walt Whitman is quite obvious and strong, showing Lincoln as the father of the nation able to filibuster like any other senator or representative, sacrificing his own life, his own wife, his own sons to the only objective he had in mind: to save the union by defeating the secessionists, which he did.
But the film centers on the crucial period after Gettysburg and the famous address, after the "government of the people, by the people, for the people" till his death and his funeral. Those crucial two years of his presidency and of his legacy. To finish the war he had to cast in iron the freeing of the black slaves and that could only be performed with a constitutional amendment to the constitution, the thirteenth to be more clear, and then the rest and the next two amendments are what will come after him. This battle is essential and Spielberg plays with the situation with obvious pleasure. Votes of representatives or bought up, not with money but with administrative jobs. The promise of defeat to some Democrats in the North is also vastly used when necessary.
In that debate in the House of Representatives in January 1865 some declarations by the slavery-leaning conservatives are funny in retrospect: menacing the House with the Black vote, with Black Representatives and Senators, and after that where will they stop? The menace of the vote of women and all other catastrophes that could happen if the Black slaves were finally freed by the Constitution. And the vote was won with a simple argument: "I am not for the equality of all things, but only for the equal rights of everyone in front of the law." A typical compromise on the side of the anti-slavery camp. The US Constitution cannot declare everyone equal in real terms but only in rights. Yet it will take one more amendment for that principle to become true, the fourteenth amendment that is at the core of the debate on same-sex marriage right now, the Supreme Court's decision pending on the subject.
This is so true indeed that what is important is not the real equality of people in material terms but their equality in rights. Then the equality in real material terms has to be built, constructed, won step by step, one step at a time. That's the American way. They do not look after every single individual case, but they state in general terms rights for everyone and then everyone is supposed to conquer the implementation of these rights. Real equality for the Black slaves was won only one century later, in 1964-65 with the laws on equal rights and the vote, one century after the full freeing of the slaves. A long, very long time and delay, but that's what it took for the slaves and then their descendants to get beyond the Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder (or Syndrome), for them to re-conquer their soul, rebuild their mind, reconstruct their self-pride and their future. And it took them more than forty more years to reach the top, and yet the President is not a descendant of slaves. The trip to equality is not complete yet, but it will be some time soon now.
The film insists on a picture of Abraham Lincoln as a fast aging man surrounded by personal tragedies, like the loss of a first son to the war, and then the enlistment of his second son against his mother's wish and his father's advice, and then the crazy emotional state of his wife who is constantly oscillating between headaches and breakdown, with some moments of sane political vision. She was instrumental in Lincoln's life and decisions, but not as a direct inspirer, rather as an obstacle to negotiate, and that obstacle when negotiated opened doors to the next step or steps on the road to eternal gratitude of the Black people, by the White people and for the Black and the White people. Lincoln turned Gettysburg from a deadly defeat to a shining victory, and of the whole humanity as for that. We still owe him a bundle.
The last element to say is of course about the marvelous performance of the actor. It is a challenge for any actor to impersonate a historical character of this magnitude. Daniel Day Lewis is one of the greater American actors in the line of the greatest like Dustin Hoffman or Jack Nicholson in the previous generation. It is so difficult to embody both the crumbling physical shape of the man and his building up resolve and stamina on the essential question that will make history, unluckily after his death. A brilliant performance.
Think when you see the film of what the Lincoln Monument has become in Washington D.C. and you might understand the depth of this history in the making that is only coming true today nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War. I will regret though the fact that Grant's and Sherman's sweeping fire trail down into the Deep South in 1864 and 65 is only alluded to and not shown. The horror of the war is rather discreetly evoked with one or two strong pictures here and there but very little altogether.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU