The presidential courage of a lifetime

Rating: 8/10 (23 February 2013)

The audience has already being warned of what is to come before the film officially begins. Like it would be the case before it would show at times throughout the course of the film of the mentions to the names of the prominent scenes it is showing and the people involved, a short introduction for the international audience who are not tuned in into what the film is going to be about.
It might have been about Abraham Lincoln's final months in office starting at the turn of 1865, which is how the film begins, but there were two things Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) was attempting to grapple with before he officially begins his second term later in the same year. The effort to negotiate an end to the painful and bloody American Civil War, and persuading a divided House of Representatives to vote for the passing of the 13th Amendment which is to abolish slavery once and for all. The opening scene after the introduction gives a glimpse of what Lincoln has to deal with, a battlefield of white and black men fighting and casualties from both sides before his meeting with four young white and black men (Lukas Haas, Dane DeHaan, Colman Domingo, David Oyelowo) waiting to join their companies while they recited excerpts from what he said at the Gettysburg Address from two months before.
After that, it is dominated by scenes of where the American soul, identity and psyche are to be fought and form the basis of this film. Private meetings with the likes of one of his closest advisers Francis Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) and his family and meetings in his office with ordinary people like a Mr. and Mrs. Jolly (Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel) which he termed it as his 'public opinion baths', cabinet meetings with his administration in the likes of Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn), Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Bruce McGill) and Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher (Dakin Matthews) along with the Republican congressman often present at those meetings in James Ashley (David Costabile), the verbal battles between the House of Representatives members at the chambers over the debating of the 13th Amendment with Fernando Wood (Lee Pace) and leader of the Democrat opposition George Pendleton (Peter McRobbie) representing the Democrats and Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) representing the Republican Party which is controlling the House at that time.
Lincoln the politician and president is a consummate one at best in terms of trying whatever means possible, even on the verge on doing arm-twisting deals for the procurement of votes for the 13th Amendment from especially the lame duck Democrat congressmen who had lost the re-election two months before via the lobbying group Seward had organised consisting of people like William N. Bilbo (James Spader), Robert Latham (John Hawkes) and Richard Schell (Tim Blake Nelson), giving illustrations to tie in with what he is to talk about and telling seemingly irrelevant stories on cue which before Lincoln did led to his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton not able to tolerate him as they were waiting for news from Wilmington at the War Department. But Lincoln the family man is a different matter altogether in terms of his relationships with his eldest son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his wife Mary (Sally Field). The death of one of their younger sons in Willie three years before the film begins had complicated the husband-wife relationship between the president and the First Lady and that also influencing Mary on her insistence of not wanting to see Robert on the battlefront. Even despite studying at Harvard at that time and coming home to see his family at the White House, Robert has always insisted on wanting to serve in the Union army.
But at the end of the day for all the procurement of votes and the verbal battles between the Democrat and Republican congressmen, Lincoln is still trying to figure out what the black population signifies to the United States of America as a whole should the 13th Amendment be passed in the House of Representatives after all. A conversation with his wife's black dressmaker and seamstress Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley (Gloria Reuben) would provide food for thought.
While the likeness and voice for the 16th President of the United States is there for Day-Lewis which does feel at times it is the real president himself speaking, special mention has to go to Tommy Lee Jones and his portrayal of Thaddeus Stevens, for his performance and the wit he has always especially reserved for his Democrat colleagues at the House of Representatives in Wood and Pendleton which provided some of the best scenes in the film, apart from when Day-Lewis's character nearly lost it in front of his cabinet colleagues after they were squabbling among themselves.
Keen observers of American history and/or politics will know what the final outcome of the 13th Amendment was, but it is something when director Steven Spielberg is able to pull off the suspense almost to the end. Still, it is something to have the audience at the edge of their seats, wondering whether the amendment is able to pass or not. Politics was never meant to be a glamorous thing in the first place even in the 19th century United States of America, but it is a glimpse of what can be made possible despite the various strong challenges and obstacles along the way.