story of the past and present

Rating: 10/10 (26 November 2012)

There are couple of things to discuss about Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln". Despite what the title implies, the movie is not the life story of the sixteenth president. Rather, it focuses on late 1864 and early 1865, when the reelected Lincoln was trying to get the Thirteenth Amendment passed to outlaw slavery. What we see is how Lincoln had to scratch a few backs to ensure the amendment's passage. Similar things happen to this day.
But there's an even more important clear analogy to the present day. When the proposal to ban slavery gets brought before congress, a number of congressmen attack it as things like "an attack on freedom" or "an overreach of government power". In later years, the reactionary forces in the United States said the same sorts of things about the Civil Rights Act, and today the Tea Party types say the same sorts of things about today's social progress.
Does the movie have any drawbacks? Well, there's not much look at the war itself, except for a scene of disembodied limbs on a battlefield, and there's not much look at slavery, except for a photo of a whipped slave. Of course, one could make the argument that these aren't supposed to be the main focus of what Lincoln had to do in order to get the Thirteenth Amendment passed.
Above all else, the movie shows Abraham Lincoln's human side. The sixteenth president saw that ending slavery would take significant ambition, and he did what he felt that he had to in order to carry out this objective. It's not Spielberg's best movie, but it's definitely up there. Daniel Day-Lewis brings a fine embodiment to Abraham Lincoln, as does Sally Field as his wife Mary. Providing impeccable support are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, and Tommy Lee Jones.