Other Reviews in this Series: Duel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Empire of the Sun, Amistad, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, Munich
Other Spielberg Reviews: Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Bridge of Spies
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Tony Kushner
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill, Tim Blake Nelson, Joseph Cross, Jared Harris, Lee Pace, David Costabile
Runtime: 150 mins.
2012
Lincoln is fascinating to watch. It has the distinction of being the only movie that has ever made me think, "Wow, politics are really interesting!" Spielberg takes two and a half hours of politicking, bureaucracy, and an overfamiliar historical figure, and he makes it all fresh and full of vibrant energy.
At this point, the very end of my ten movie Spielberg cycle, I'm getting kind of bored with saying the same laudatory things about the Berg over and over again, but I must repeat them because they cannot be overstated. Spielberg is the greatest filmmaker of our time, and as he tackles more and more ambitious projects, it becomes clear that he's only improving as the decades pass.
Lincoln is overpopulated with talented filmmakers and performers, but at its epicenter is a trifecta of massive talents that launch the movie into the category of modern masterpiece. The first of the trifecta is Spielberg, of course. Late in his career we still get sprinklings of lighthearted genre films like The Adventures of Tintin, but we're seeing a growing number of heavier, socially conscious films like Munich and Lincoln. It would be easy to lump those two grand historical narratives together, but watching them so close together illustrates how little they have in common. Munich was a pitch black yowl about the trap of cyclical violence, with a dark palette, excessive violence, and dynamic camerawork that wove through scenes of calm punctuated by chaos. Lincoln has much sunnier compositions, with large windows, well-lit government rooms, and warm fireplaces. The brutal violence is got out of the way in the first minute of the film, so that it effectively sets the backdrop but does not distract from the drama. Spielberg and Kaminski's camerawork has the decency to root itself, with the exception of slow zooms, dollies, and pans. Spielberg doesn't do anything flashy with camera movement because the action isn't physical--it's ideological, emotional, and intellectual. Spielberg frames scenes to capture the production design, and let the actors fill up the lens with words words words.
These words are supplied by the second member of our megatalented trifecta, Tony Kushner. He is the writer of Lincoln, Munich, and the hyperbeloved Angels in America plays. Kushner and Spielberg together achieve the miracle of making two and a half hours of political hobnobbing feel urgent and captivating. Kushner's pristinely structured screenplay takes us through Abraham Lincoln's efforts to ratify the 13th amendment, which will make good on the promise he made with the Emancipation Proclamation. The trouble is, to pass an amendment requires a two thirds majority in the House of Representatives, and Lincoln is having trouble receiving unanimous support from his own Republican party, let alone the bipartisan support required. He sees the passing of this amendment as his life's great work, a project that if it should fail, would mean the failure of his presidency. Unfortunately, what support he can muster is often predicated upon the assumption that this amendment will hasten the end of the Civil War, and Lincoln must use all of his resources to make sure the amendment passes before the Civil War peters out on its own.
Kushner writes the best dialogue I've heard in a movie since... I don't know when. Maybe a Coen brothers film? He takes full advantage of the heightened American English that the educated classes spoke in the mid-nineteenth century. A great deal of the movie is spent on rhetorical arguments, and the wit of the participants is front and center. Kushner accomplishes the balancing act of writing phraseology that is unfamiliar enough to tickle the verbal centers of our brain, yet not so alienating that we get lost in their rapid fire delivery. These verbal bouts crackle with life. A personal favorite was the top notch courtroom insult, "You are more reptile than man, George, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you!"
Kushner writes all his characters with such humanity that it's easy for us to track the dozens of viewpoints and perspectives piled upon us over the course of the runtime. We get glimpses of these characters primarily through their political dealings, but they feel no less like full people because of it. This is exemplified by Tommy Lee Jones' work as Thaddeus Stevens, the speaker of the above insult. His character is a radical Republican who is for abolishing slavery, so long as it leads directly to complete equality, including enfranchisement for black Americans. At first his firebrand tongue and extreme stance act as an impediment to Lincoln, but the way these two men bend to accommodate each other has to do in equal parts with their political perspectives and their domestic situations, of which we only get a peek.
But the performer who rightly dominates the limelight is the third member of our holy trifecta, Daniel Day-Lewis. This is an actor who only works every few years, because each role he accepts requires such immense preparation and investment that it dominates his life. He may be the greatest acting genius working in film today. Watching his Abraham Lincoln is truly uncanny; here we see a monument come to life, but rather than the Lincoln we were all raised to imagine, Day-Lewis gives us a complicated man with layers of nuance. His voice whines and strains, yet still carries weight. When he speaks, everybody in the room listens. This is both because his speeches are spellbinding, and because his physicality is commanding. Day-Lewis does amazing posture work, sometimes using his height to impose without exactly threatening, sometimes bending himself so as to be in a submissive position. He grasps people's hands and shoulders in a way that is both warm and possessive. His own head and shoulders are constantly bent, a nation's woes weighing upon them. Lincoln's portrayal of that most beloved man perfectly shows why he was such an adored figure without mythologizing him in an unfair way. We see his deceitfulness and prevarication. We hear him tell stories that are rambling and apparently pointless, but endearing nonetheless. We see him and his wife Mary (Sally Field) mistreat each other in an intense bedroom exchange during a lightning storm. Yet we never resent him, even when his methodology is suspect.
Biopics so often fall into the trap of blandly presenting events as if calling something a "true story" were all it needed in order to be interesting. Lincoln makes no such mistake. Everything in the film is geared towards portraying actual events, but more importantly making a commentary on the events and people it portrays. Spielberg is often accused of idealizing and pulling punches, but I believe that is simply not true. Here he gives us not an idealized view of American politics, but a view of how American politics can be changed for the better using the tool of idealism. Idealism is not a fix-all, or an illusion: It is an expression of sheer determination, the lifeblood of great men. Spielberg is not showing us a time when we were better; there is plenty of despicable action and rhetoric in Lincoln. Rather, he is showing us, as always, how we can be better now.
4.5 / 5 BLOBS
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