Intelligent, classic, moving

Rating: 9/10 (16 February 2013)

Around 150 years ago, 600,000 Americans died in a bloody civil war that was essentially fought over the issue of whether to abolish slavery. It almost tore the United States apart. The man who kept it together was Abraham Lincoln.
This is an important and intelligent historical-political drama about Lincoln's efforts to free American slaves. Even in the free North, it didn't happen after a single glorious speech. It was a determined, rancorous, highly political and sometimes nasty effort to get two thirds of the US Congress to vote in favour of the 13th amendment. The vote could easily have been lost.
If you like historical dramas based on true events, you'll enjoy this movie. It certainly felt historically accurate. Spielberg has succeeded in bringing Lincoln, and city of Washington DC during the Civil-War years, to life.
I cannot really explain it, but at times I was deeply moved while watching this film.
I am not particularly a Daniel Day Lewis fan, but his performance in this movie was astonishing and most certainly Oscar-worthy. Sally Fields shows us exactly what Mrs Lincoln must have been like. The casting and acting of all the actors was superb. Not a false note anywhere.
Even though this is a Hollywood blockbuster, it is not a sensational action film. It is a discourse-oriented and rather didactic movie that presumes a certain understanding of American history. The dialogue and events were a little difficult to follow at times, even with subtitles. At the screening I was at, some people were apparently unable to handle it, and walked out.
Spielberg remains a movie-maker of the highest order. In making a movie that came into existence as a classic, he demonstrates most convincingly that he has not lost his touch.
He has shown the world why Americans consider Lincoln to be a great man, despite the horrors of the Civil War.