Spielberg Just Doesn't Know How to End a Movie

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2012)

I often say Tchaikovsky wrote "how the hell do I land this thing?" symphonies. The final notes sound, then, nope, a long coda that finally sputters out from exhaustion. Spielberg makes movies that way. Schindler's list concluded with the surviving Schindler Jews placing memorials on Schindler's grave. Okay, that was kind of neat. In AI, the robot boy finds the Blue Fairy and gazes at her until his batteries run out. Fade to black. Perfect. A very 2001 enigmatic ending. Nope. We get another 15 minutes of him being revived in the distant future. In Lincoln, we see him walking out the door on the way to Ford's Theater. Fade to black. Cut! CUT! Oh no, nononoNONO. We know he got shot! Why tack it on to the end? Just fade from him walking out the door into his second inaugural speech. Why does he feel he has to tack a superfluous ending onto his movies?
It's good. Daniel Day Lewis owns the role now. Tommy Lee Jones is dryly humorous as abolitionist activist Thaddeus Stevens. He spends the whole film in a wig that would embarrass Donald Trump, then when we see him last, we find out why he wears it. The plot deals with the maneuvering to get the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery through Congress. But it has about as much punch as the vote to fund a new dam or declare a day honoring whatever. The pro-slavery characters are portrayed as slimy, but they might as well be crooked car dealers. The film needs something more to drive home the horror of slavery and the moral imperative for ending it.