Cloying

Rating: 6/10 (12 January 2013)

Spielberg's Lincoln is a good film and most will love it. For me, however, the movie is annoyingly pious, melodramatic, and hard to swallow. It opens with the black and white soldiers unbelievably reciting the Gettysburg Address and never lets up from there. Spielberg's Lincoln moves throughout the film like he's in a medieval religious painting with a halo painted around his head. He's portrayed as more messianic than Jesus, and looks as if he's pulled straight from the wax museum. Thank goodness one of the characters in the film finally tires of Lincoln's stories for I certainly did.
While I'm confident most of the movie is based upon well researched historical facts, a little more balance would have made the movie better. The best movie heroes are flawed characters, not saints. Yes Lincoln was a renowned storyteller and he rightfully deserves his place in history for his achievements. I have little more than a schoolboy's knowledge of the man but it is known that he entertained shipping the slaves out of the country and some report that he saw blacks as racially inferior. He was a man of his time, however, and while it does not detract from his great achievements I feel the film could have knocked the great saint down a peg or two.
They needed an annoying overly-emotional actress to portray Mary Lincoln so they looked no further than Sally Field. Like others report, I feel the movie should have ended a few minutes earlier, before the Theater shooting. Stevens taking the 13th Amendment home is unbelievable and though it was reported his black housekeeper was his mistress, the movie portrayal here is pretty cheesy and more an ode to white guilt than historicity.
Overall, I felt this movie was much more Ron Howard/Penny Marshall than Steven Spielberg.