Lincoln (spoilers)

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2012)

A magnificent film. It almost seems like it's divinely inspired. Most of the best films are about love, be it love between two characters, love for an idea or principle, love of a lost time or place, or a film- maker's love of subject. In this case, Spielberg's love for one of the few Americans all reasonable people can agree was a truly great man is palpable (and when love in art is deeply felt, audiences turn out; no mysteries here about its success). The care with which he shows Lincoln facing his greatest test as a man, a president, and historical figure is spine-tingling in its intensity.
Funny, in a year when the other film about Lincoln presented him as a vampire hunter, this one is shot and told much like a ghost story. A bold but fitting approach as there is something mystical about the way Lincoln goes about procuring the last crucial votes needed to pass the anti-slavery amendment. On the surface of it, logically, if one watches closely, he should fall short. And yet of course, against all odds, it passes. Perhaps only a magic-minded film-maker like Spielberg could bring this out.
My only quarrel is with the ending. As with A.I. (a botched and vastly inferior film) Spielberg doesn't quite know how or when to end his story.
Once the amendment is passed, there needs to be a more poetic way of pointing to Lincoln's assassination and fading to his stirring flashback address than showing his son and wife's bawling, hysterical reactions to the news, then cutting to Lincoln lying on his deathbed surrounded by loved ones and cabinet members. There, Lincoln looks so small and pitiful in contrast to the meticulous legend building of the previous 2 1/2 hours that it breaks the spell. It belongs in another film, the assassination story, not this one.
And the haunting final line - which may or may not actually have been uttered by Stanton, but surely should have been - "And now he belongs to the ages" is curiously all but thrown away.
But I'm more than willing to forgive 5 ill-advised minutes in an overall great film (in the great cinematic year of 2012).