More about voting process in Congress than about Lincoln

Rating: 2/10 (24 August 2013)

Very disappointing. I had expected a sweeping story of Lincoln though the background of the civil war, covering for example his relationship with his generals and with Europe, slavery in the context of the time, and how the Union triumphed against superior Confederate soldiery by means of superior logistics. I also expected a staging of the Gettysburg address.
Instead we got a excruciatingly detailed and tedious account of the machinations and wheeler-dealing of passing one particular Constitutional amendment. The scenes are almost all in committee rooms or Lincoln family domestic - it seems like a budget. Lincoln himself comes over as going senile (perhaps he was), constantly telling stories from his earlier years; he does not seem focused. One set-piece speech was pathetic ("That's my speech").
As a non-American, I cannot raise much interest in the detailed mechanism for passing an amendment; the fact is that it was passed. But even if I were interested, the film left much unexplained. Eg a 2/3 majority was needed, and most of the film was about the lobbying for the number needed; however in the vote some members were absent or abstained, and the film gave no explanation of how such non-votes were handled in evaluating the 2/3. This was important, as these numbers were the whole point of the film.
And no explanation either of how the Southern Congressmen (presumably absent, so not voting) were handled in this 2/3 count, given Lincoln's insistence that the US remained a single nation all the while.
This film may mean a lot, and be familiar ground, to Americans; but it ignores other audiences. Near the end, there is a scene at the Appomattox Court House (we are told in a sub-title), and we see a grey haired man in a grey uniform mounting a horse. I happen to have read a lot about the Civil War, but I needed to explain to my wife (who was almost asleep with boredom) that it was Robert E Lee signing the Confederate surrender (oddly, shown departing rather than arriving for the event); otherwise it would have meant nothing to her, nor to most other non-US viewers I suspect.