Big ideas. big performances, and downsized script.
LINCOLN (2012)
Directed by Stephen
Spielberg
Touchstone Pictures,
PG-13, 150 minutes
* * *
When rumors surfaced that Steven Spielberg intended to
direct a biopic of Abraham Lincoln, historians worried that he would turn the
16th president into Indiana Jones, while action movie fans fretted
he was going to make another didactic film in the spirit of Amistad (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), or Munich (2005). Lincoln will
throw some raw meat to be both howling packs, though it won’t slake the
appetite of either. The first thing you need to know about Lincoln is that it’s neither a masterpiece nor a bomb; it’s a most
uncharacteristic Spielberg film–a middle-of-the-road effort that, were it not
for several sensational performances, would probably be forgotten very quickly.
Spielberg and scriptwriter Tony Kushner wisely opted to
forego a Lincoln biography and concentrate on the five-month period between
November of 1864 (Lincoln’s reelection) and April of 1865 (his assassination).
They truncated the story even further by concentrating of the battle to pass
the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which officially banned
slavery. Kushner’s script was based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lincoln
biography, Team of Rivals, an
intriguing but flawed book from one whose scholarship is not always as careful
as it should be. But Goodwin isn’t the problem here; Kushner is. He provides a
script that’s long on quips and zingers, but devoid of pacing. The first half
of this two-and-a-half hour film feels epic, and not in a good way. Virtually
every character in the Congressional debate is introduced, even though most end
up making little more than cameo appearances. One might applaud an attempt at
thoroughness, or one might conclude that this level of detail is the job of biographers
and that there are just too many players to keep straight unless you are a
history junkie. (I am a historian,
but I come down on the “too many” side.) Nor can we dimsiss Kushner’s plodding
pace as being true to the historic record; prior to the publication of the Congressional Record after 1873, there
was no verbatim account of Congressional debate, just notes. (And even today
members can “edit” their remarks prior to publication.) This means that nearly
every scrap of dialogue in Lincoln is
imagined rather than literal. This includes Lincoln’s own words and thoughts;
he was a deeply private man who did not keep a diary and from whom precious few
private letters exist. Most of what we think
we know of the man comes from secondhand accounts from friends and foes.
At the end of this review I will append some scholarly
observations but first, back to the film. Everyone is talking about the
performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, and well they should. I can’t
imagine that Day-Lewis won’t win the
Best Actor award for this performance. He looks the part–right down to unkempt
hair, the unwashed clothing, and the haggard ashen face of a leader whose
vitality, like the flower of male youth, was drained by four long years of
bloody warfare. Even the voice is right; Lincoln had a high squeaky voice, not
the sonorous tones we hear in plays and heroic film bios. Day-Lewis also
humanizes Lincoln to the degree that Spielberg allows him to. Like the
president he plays, Day-Lewis is in command. Just wrap the Oscar now and spare
us the long ceremony.
While we’re at it, reserve one for Tommy Lee Jones as
Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the Radical Republicans and one of the few
white men in North America who believed in African-American equality. Jones is
a volcano whose explosion is being (barely) contained by a pot lid, the hope
that the 13th Amendment is the first step in racial justice.
Shout-outs also for James Spader as Republican Party “fixer” William Bilbo, and
for Jackie Earle Haley’s wily-meets-oily portrayal of Confederate Vice
President Alexander Stephens, the head of a delegation hoping for a last-minute
ceasefire and appeasement that might preserve slavery in the South. As always,
David Strathairn is emotive and strong, this time as William Seward, Lincoln’s
Secretary of State.
Other good things include the crisper pace of the second half
of the film, one which actually made Congress’s deliberative ways seem
exciting; the film’s humor; and the story it tells. If you thought the
Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves, you are the victim of a very old myth.
(See below) As the film shows, it took the 13th Amendment to end
slavery, and it was vital that it be done before the war actually concluded.
Kudos to Spielberg for deciding to cut to the chase of what the Civil War was really about.
The weaknesses? The film is too long, Kushner’s script
stripped of its witticisms is pretty ordinary, and there’s still a bit too much
deification of Lincoln–aides looking up with doe-eyes, diaphanous lighting that
presages angelic transformation, and brass fanfare from John Williams. The
soundtrack is cloying, as if Williams was trying to outdo Aaron Copeland’s A Lincoln Portrait in solemnity or Fanfare for the Common Man in
anthem-like majesty. This is especially noticeable in the film’s telescoped
coda that takes us from the amendment’s passage in December of 1864, to
Lincoln’s murder less than four months later. Spielberg is also ham-handed in
this section as he covers events in lightening speed that could have dispatched
more cleanly by either a voiceover or a rolling text scroll. Parts of the film
also feel too modern, as if Spielberg was trying to slip in some of those
Hollywood liberal values that the political right so despises. I was happy that
Spielberg presented slavery as an intractable problem that only government
could arbitrate, but I also half expected an impromptu soliloquy on the virtues
of strong central government.
Grade this one a low B. Shows promise, demonstrates
rudimentary understanding of events, and has moments of insight, but could use
some greater fact checking, often makes speculative leaps, and needs a stiff
edit for clarity, flow, and continuity. In movie terms, that’s three of five
stars.--Rob Weir
Addendum for History
Nuts
Let’s give Spielberg credit for some things he got (mostly)
right. These include:
·
Buying
Congress: People love to say that today’s politicians are crooked, and so
they might be. But they are pikers compared to those of the 19th
century. Congress was so corrupt that money was handed out openly and most
principles could be compromised if the price was right. All manner of political
bribes were used to get the 13th Amendment through the Senate. It
didn’t unfold exactly as shown, but deals were made.
·
The
Overrated Emancipation Proclamation: In the film, Lincoln called it a “war
measure.” That’s right (it also had the purpose of helping dissuade the British
Parliament from giving aid to the Confederacy, as it would appear that Britain
was supporting a practice-slavery-it had outlawed). The Emancipation Proclamation was
of dubious legality and it freed almost no slaves as it was confined to “those
areas under rebellion,” not those under federal control or those that has
surrendered. It is one of history’s great symbolic
documents, but it did not free slaves.
·
Victory
was still in doubt: No, the Civil War wasn’t just a mop up after the Battle
of Gettysburg. The biggest threat to the Union was always political, not
military; it was never a question of which power was stronger, but whether the
Union had the political resolve and public support to win the war. The Southern strategy was to
wage a war of attrition and many Northerners had had enough by 1864. Lincoln faced
strong pressure to negotiate an end as late as the opening months of 1865.
·
Not all
the Democrats were in the South: Lincoln feared he might lose the election
of 1864 and that was not paranoia. The Democratic Party remained strong in the
North, especially in the Mid-Atlantic States. Many Democrats–including the
execrable Fernando Wood of New York–were “Copperheads” who sympathized with the
Confederacy.
·
The Republicans
were a nest of vipers: Southerners stereotyped the Republicans as a party
of fanatical abolitionists and social levelers, but that was not the case. Only
the party’s extreme left wing (typified by Stevens) believed in equality. Not
even Lincoln was an abolitionist until 1864; he supported gradual emancipation
prior to then. More to the point, the GOP was so faction-ridden that it would
have won the presidency in 1856 if the party had united behind one candidate.
Lincoln was that one candidate in 1860, solely because he was the least
objectionable to the factions. Lincoln was surrounded by men who felt they, not
he, should rightfully be president, and some were openly disrespectful.
·
Most
whites were racist: Right again. Anti-slavery was not the same as
pro-equality. Many (probably most) Northerners hated African Americans, a large
number disliked Lincoln for changing the war’s purpose to one for black
emancipation, and very few of those seeking to end slavery felt that whites and
blacks could live in harmony. (Many wished to deport freedmen to colonies in
either Africa or Latin America.)
The Dodgy Stuff!
Spielberg also took liberties that make a lot of historians
cringe, including:
·
The
cracker-barrel president: Lincoln, by most accounts, loved stories and
jokes, but Spielberg/Kushner give us a president who, whenever things were
toughest, trotted out shaggy dog tales filled with uncommon wisdom that cut
through the crap. The president does stand-up? No.
·
Mary
Lincoln was no Sally Field: “Lovable” is not a word used by many to
describe Mary Todd Lincoln. She was known for being vain, cantankerous, and
quite probably bipolar. Some of her critics even accused her of being a
Confederate spy! Granted losing one’s child and (later) her husband could drive one
to despair, but the film’s suggestion that Mary had a temporary nervous breakdown
is probably too optimistic; she might have been nuttier than a Snickers bar well before Abe was felled.
·
Thaddeus
Stevens and his ‘black’ mistress: This was a story told by his enemies to slander Stevens, but
it’s more complicated. Lydia Hamilton Smith, his housekeeper and lover, would
indeed have been viewed as “black” by the standards of the day, but she was a
quadroon who, by outward appearances, looked white, not like S. Epatha
Merkeson, the African-American actress who played her in the film. Which came first, Stevens' belief in equality or the affair? Unclear.
·
Congressional
capers: The caper-like pacing of recruiting supporters for the 13th
Amendment is surely cinematic invention modeled on Keystone Kops hijinks.
·
Lincoln
wasn’t Lincoln yet: Did two soldiers, one white and one black, recite the
Gettysburg Address to the president from memory? Call it a Hollywood moment! Like John Kennedy, Lincoln was more beloved in death than in life.
·
Congress
isn’t a courtroom: But Kushner and Spielberg played it like one for the
final vote on the 13th Amendment. Roll call voting was done alphabetically,
not by state. This scene is pure TV courtroom in its staged drama.
·
Word up: A
final reminder that most of the dialogue, except when documents are being
quoted, is imaginary. Don’t quote this film and think you’ve quoted Lincoln
lest first you verify. Especially if you’re in my class!
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