Witnessing Lincoln
Steven Spielberg's new historical movie, Lincoln, is a tour de force, if not always of historical accuracy (on which, see Howard Holzer's piece in The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/22/what-s-true-and-false-in-lincoln-movie.html), at least of something of the drama and spirit of the history surrounding the sixteenth President.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field do a masterful job of portraying the Union's first couple, mired in the national as well as personal heartache of the Civil War. Ever noted for his immersion in the roles he plays, Day-Lewis captures a sense of both the man and his remarkable placement in history. The tenor voice, the war-weariness reflected in his shambling gait, the bent to diffusing tension with a pertinent (or not-so-pertinent) story or bon mot, the sense that he was a smarter man than given credit for yet found his element at just the nexus of national crisis when otherwise he might have been a wanna-be politician of merely local prominence (not unlike his great general U.S. Grant) -- all of these add depth, authenticity, and lustre to an exceptional performance. Let's not forget that this actor portraying one of our greatest Presidents is from the British Isles -- a fact easily put out of mind, the more so as he cracks one very funny story at English expense. He may add a third Best Actor Oscar for this performance and if so, it would be well-earned.
The portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln likewise captures the alternation between high purpose and venality, machiavellian lucidity on the one hand and borderline hysteria on the other. In this, Field avoids the excesses of portrayals like that of Mary Tyler Moore a couple of decades ago.
Even the likenesses are well-done: David Strathairn makes a very credible William H. Seward, but the winner in my estimation is Jackie Earle Haley as Alexander Stephens.
The depiction of black Americans, while in some ways anachronistic (their welcome into the House gallery, for instance), lends gravitas and drama and highlights the importance of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery in all U.S. territory. This points, for me, to the greatest achievement of Lincoln: its almost religious faith in how democracy, for all its messiness and even squalor, can by a confluence of interests and guided by visionary leadership, "get it right" in ways which are truly profound and bear immense and lasting consequences.
If you haven't seen Lincoln, do. Not a regular movie-goer by habit, I did so, twice. It was not only a delight, but a worthy investment of time. And a reminder of what there is to believe in about America, and why we do.
Prince Frederick, Maryland
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