Be Excellent To Each Other

Phew, he has acquitted himself to be sure.

After the gloopy egg-fest that was War Horse, Spielberg returns to top form with Lincoln. A sort of West Wing in waistcoats, Lincoln takes no prisoners in its complex political intrigue and horse-trading. This isn’t a film for lack-witted or the sleepy, it moves at a fair clip and has the confidence to not belabour. Indeed, characters are introduced who are barely named. Who they may be is not important, only their willingness to be a tool in the great struggle to pass the 13th amendment. Mercifully, the film sidesteps weary speeches of injustice and lingering shots of black men frowning nobly. Instead it relies on a myriad of little moments scattered throughout the film to keep forefront the indignities and suffering of the black in 1860’s America. There is Lincoln’s little son Tad gazing by candlelight in fascination at glass plates featuring the flayed backs of slaves. There is the constant background role of blacks in Washington DC handling all the menial work, including the disposal of severed limbs into a charnel pit and unabashed racist language from even the defender’s ranks. Refreshingly there are no saints in Lincoln, even the great man himself cannot decide whether he can consider them equal to the white. The closest the film gets to overt speechifying occurs in a very early scene of two black soldiers talking with Lincoln on the matter of equal pay. It has been questioned as to its veracity and yet it works well enough, thanks to the embarrassed awkwardness of the interogator's friend and Lincoln's apparent dismissal of the grievence with an amiable, seemingly pointless story. Lincoln was known to talk with the troops, white and black, and it is not improbable such a thing happened. The chain of the command in the Civil War was not remotely as held in awe as it is now.

And so the film rather than recoursing to a hand-wringing exercise in white-guilt instead revolves around a thrilling hunt for a dozen or so votes to win the amendment. It is what has been eloquently labled elsewhere as a 'political heist movie'. This matter of ammendment-passing is by no means an easy task as these votes lie in the hands of men not easily persuaded – not even by corruption in the form of patronage. Complicating matters further is his once-rival and once cabinet member Francis Blair, who has invited men from Richmond to discuss peace. With the slaughter continuing unabated, can Lincoln risk appearing to sacrifice peace on the altar of abolitionism? And Lincoln himself is plagued with doubts. He has no idea what will happen to the country when the abolition of slavery is achieved. Will all the blacks flee north causing a tide of anger and resentment culminating in race riots? Will they then demand the vote, something that causes further disquiet to his mind? How will this affect reconstruction? One Republican senator proves the prejudice that dwelt within many of them. Despite the sacrifice of his son, his willingness to quietly bear his grief and support Lincoln in every other matter, he still confesses, "I hate them all. I am a prejudiced man, sir."

It is this electric air of tension born by struggle both internal and amongst brother Yankees that makes this film. In smoky gas-lit rooms tempers fray and scabrous insults are hurled. The film is surprisingly fast-paced and dynamic with little of the plodding that afflicts the conventional biopic. It also in some aspects feels thrillingly modern. One of my favourite scenes takes place in a bustling war room where Stanton (the superbly glowering Bruce McGill) waits impatiently for news. The room is dominated by a vast telegraph desk manned by four operators. Poles reach up and carry wires to the outside. You can sense a quiet marvel amongst the people there at the ability to get the news on the instant of how the battle is going. Replace the machine with glowing glass panels and keyboards and you would strike upon the only real difference between then and now.

And the rest of their world is conjured in equally assured detail. The frequent coach rides, the bars, the cheap hotels where crabs are cracked with mallets at the dinner table. You can feel the cool air of the chill season, the crackle of the hearth, smell the fug of the cigars and feel the slick of spit tobacco underfoot. It’s the best evocation of time gone since Master & Commander. Spielberg's usual cinematographer reigns in the golden-hour self-induglence and commendably shoots scenes in harsh-sunlight and overcast sky to dispell chocolatte box cliche. Meanwhile, John Williams offers up a restrained and elegant score that remains, like the men and women it complements, tightly buttoned up.

Another wonderful scene is Lincoln’s dream. He rides a boat, alone, on a wide –impossibly wide – river, moving faster and faster, with no tiller to steer and racing towards a distant shore. The thundering portentousness of a twenty second shot is breath taking and it is one of the most seemingly simple and beautiful effects shots I have witnessed in a long time.
So it looks mighty fine indeed. What of the acting? Well, Daniel Day Lewis IS Lincoln. It is impossible to think of Lincoln as being the smallest degree different. This isn’t merely re-enactment it is living-history in the truest, grandest sense. Hell, it is resurrection. This is Lincoln himself upon the screen. His reedy timbre sounds so right it immediately discredits the constant white-man’s Morgan-Freeman attempts that have gone before. The weight upon his shoulders grinds him down and yet his frame moves with incredible strength and presence. His mouth shifts into a smile as he recounts yet another story, and yet the smile thins at times into something grim and tight and pained. Daniel Day Lewis sets torch to cliché and seems to embody Lincoln’s life and time within his cadaverous frame. And there’s an unspoken inevitability about him, a buried realisation that this will claim him.

The rest of the cast raise their game to meet him. Tommy Lee Jones is screen thundering as the radical abolitionist senator Thaddeus Stephens. It is he, along with a few corrupt employees of the secretary of state, whom bring a good dose of humour. The man is a master of the insult. Indeed, insults and political violence are the order of the day, proving that ye olde politics were indeed an awesomely entertaining thing. Trying to imagine David Cameron in such a world is a fantasy that can only end one way: his immediate and devastating ridicule as the small man he is.

Sally Field does very well in the thankless role of Mary Lincoln. A character as nearly as intriguing as Lincoln, Sally Field evokes the contradictory mix of strong self-will, tenderness and confidence and the barely suppressed insanity that almost claimed her. She supports her husband despite her own misgivings and yet creates turmoil in her obsessive-compulsive spending sprees. She tries to lend him her strength and yet her reason is o’erthrown by the death of her youngest son three years ago. She is like a selfish child and yet there’s a painful – almost heroic – self-realisation of it, and she does struggle so to overcome her own near-demented petulance.

Lincoln’s cabinet are deftly drawn, but rising to the fore is David Strathairn as William Seward. A man who once thought himself Lincoln’s superior and power behind the throne, Seward is now a man at peace with his status as second fiddle, and bears an affectionate high esteem for his commander in chief. And yet the politically constricting nature of the battle they fight drives him to occasional fury at Lincoln, as he warns his friend of dangerous political blunders. They are both wracked by the guilt they bear over the dripping red ledger of Union dead. Stanton, superbly played by Bruce McGill, bears up by completely quashing human feeling… yet you can see the cracks. The group are as tight knit as the team on The West Wing, and as quick, intelligent and as fractious. They leave you longing for a mini-series.

Are there weak links? Sure, but not critically so. Joseph Gordon-Levitt struggles with a role that he realises to be there merely to make an illustrative point as Lincoln’s son who is denied permission to join the army. It reveals another facet of Lincoln and Mary’s characters, but you can sense that he finds it too little to work with and has yet to have the experience to be able to flesh out a minor role, experience which Bruce McGill displays so effortlessly. I found Ulysses S. Grant to be both underplayed and slightly underwritten. He just didn’t strike me as truly being the man; he wanted that strange blend of meekness and quiet supreme-confidence that he held. I was grieved that Robert E Lee was not afforded a line either.
And then there is Spielberg’s trademark difficulty with knowing when to end. To be honest, it isn’t a real problem with this film. There’s a moment that’s so perfect and well-judged as an ending that you almost make to rise as it ends. You’ll know the one when you see it. And then it goes on for another five minutes. There isn’t anything wasted or wanting in those extra minutes, and it does not even feel like a coda, and yet it’s as if you have been brought to the point of emotional catharsis and then are asked to feel yet more. But it still remains nicely judged in itself, and affords a little surprise in the way it handles Lincoln’s death. (No facetious cries of ‘spoiler!’ I beg you.

And so we are left with a window into history. It makes the BBC’s new breed of ‘raunchified’ soap-opera period studies look embarrassingly pantomime. This is the perfect re-enactment, tuned to such a keen pitch that it seems a mere shade from the real thing. It may not be your cup of tea, but I’m damned if they could have evoked the man and the period any better.

Lincoln lives.

5/5

Awesome Pete. Always a pleasure to read your stuff.

Thank you for taking the time to write this wonderful review, Pete. Much appreciated. I shall endeavour to go and see this, after yours and kern's recommendations.

Excellent review Pete. Find it hard to argue or disagree with any of it.

As for the ending:



If you haven't read it, read Godwin's 'Team of Rivals'. Not only is it an excellent account of the man, his political rivals, and his administration, but I reckon it's one of the most readable studies of the art of politics I've come across.

Yeah, 'Team of Rivals' is bloody brilliant. She really makes the history come alive and it works as a suspense thriller too. Also, I love all the Salmon Chase stuff in there. He's an arse, but you've got to feel for the guy! Kate Chase is a wonderful character too. The pair of them need a screwball Coen movie, they really do.