American icon in political procedural

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2014)

Version I saw: UK cinema release
Actors: 8/10
Plot/script: 7/10
Photography/visual style: 6/10
Music/score: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
When names like Abraham Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis coincide, you know it's going to be a major cinematic event. Given the legendary status of this historical figure though, and his importance to American national identity, they could have gone safe and made a hagiography, a film about a saintly man being saintly and having no flaws whatsoever.
Instead, they focused on one particular event, the passing of the law that outlawed slavery throughout the United States. In order to see it through, Lincoln is required to perpetrate an ongoing deception about the status of the war which is hanging over Congress' heads and inclining them to favour abolition of slavery. He lies over and over again, explicitly contradicting the traditional portrayal of "Honest Abe", the man who "cannot tell a lie."
The result is a 'political procedural', rather like the excellent TV series 'The West Wing', in which characters stay true to their principles because of - not despite - their wisdom and fine judgement in knowing when to compromise. This is exemplified in the film by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, the character played brilliantly by Tommy Lee Jones, who climbs down from his tub-thumping rhetoric of absolute racial equality that has spooked many of the more conservative Representatives from voting in a bill which clearly leads in that direction.
Due to Spielberg's talent for melodrama, this is a fascinating story filled with tension, in which the title character's flaws are not shied away from. Coming in the same month or so as Django Unchained, it showed a much better way of making a film about American slavery, without Tarantino's ridiculous excesses.
For my full review, see my independent film blog on Blogspot, Cinema Inferno: http://cinemainferno-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/lincoln-2012.html