I remember going as a child and thinking that's what God looked like. But the film must address nonbelievers, or at least get their attention. This is a formidable challenge. Photographs of Lincoln are scarce, as are details of his personal life. The narration proceeds with brash confidence.
Scholars punctuate the narration but never disagree.
This latter event, the Ann Rutledge story, provides a fine example of how historians draw story lines in shifting sands. The story had its origins in oral history, and Carl Sandburg and John Ford ladled generous sentiment upon it. But the scholars who took control of Lincoln in midcentury hated this sap. They attacked the evidence that gave rise to it, and a generation of Ph.D. candidates learned to ignore Ann Rutledge entirely. The original oral histories, as John Y. Simon and Douglas L. Wilson have argued convincingly, contain a strong consensus that Lincoln was distraught over Ann Rutledge's death and even talked suicide.