Despite all of his politically-correct instincts—the ones that usually sabotage his work—Steven Spielberg’s skill carries the day here. Lincoln is the masterpiece of his mid-career, and the triumph of filmmaking genius over bleeding heart didacticism.
As usual the maestro has trouble starting a film—in this case a woefully improbable duo of young black recruits meets up with the president in the aftermath of battle and proceed to badger him about civil rights. And as usual, Spielberg provides the multiple endings of a perennially insecure beau, afraid we won’t like the first ending, or the second, so he tacks on yet another. These are only irritations, however, and not fatal enough flaws to ruin Lincoln‘s quickly established momentum. Once established, that momentum proves to be bracing, tender, explosive, humorous, and emotionally devastating.
Through Lincoln we are unequivocally plunged into the living tissue of the mid-19th century—here the credit must be shared by Spielberg’s longtime visual collaborators, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and production designer Rick Carter. The muddy streets of the nation’s capital, the dark, heavy-curtained interiors of Victorian America illuminated by oil lamp and candlelight, the incredibly diverse and outlandish hair, beard, and mustache fashions of the day—all easily insert us into the world experienced by the weary leader of a weary nation that had already lost 600,000 lives in bloody combat.
Casting is key, as is Tony Kushner’s smart and dextrous script (sure to be one of many Oscars for the film). Lincoln is powered by outstanding performances and by actors who convincingly articulate the movements and gestures of a bygone era. The time is a few months before the end of the Civil War, focusing on the agonizing rush to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution granting legal equality to African Americans. In a grueling and utterly fascinating House of Representatives fight—the analogy with the current fiscal cliff debate couldn’t be more exact—Democrats resist passage and instead demand that Lincoln focus on ending the war. Republicans—sharply divided (then as now)—call for either caution on Lincoln’s part, or for radical action.
In the latter camp is Republican stalwart Thaddeus Stevens played with uncanny restraint and some of the best lines in the film by Tommy Lee Jones. Leading the Democratic attack on Lincoln’s near-dictatorial determination to pass the 13th Amendment is New York Congressman Fernando Wood, a Confederacy sympathizer, played with dazzling indignation by stage actor Lee Pace. the winds of change and dogs of war are howling through this unstable moment in our nation’s history. It’s a ripping great yarn that just might be a true story.
Throughout these turbulent political battles, Spielberg weaves the domestic drama plaguing Lincoln’s own emotional life, centering on the loss of his first son early in the war and the resulting hysteria plaguing his wife Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field). Playing against her youthful days as a saccharine cutey, Field creates the first lady as a rapier intellect, an insightful political analyst, an outspoken hostess, and yes, an aging pretty woman too weary to disguise the wages of time. The film is a miracle of political storytelling, managing to articulate divisive agendas and complex deal-making with refreshing candor, wit, and sobering frankness.
Realizing that he needs more votes to pass this key bill, Lincoln demands his Secretary of State, William Seward (nimbly finessed by David Strathairn) get those votes by any means necessary. So a cheerful trio of Republican party mafiosi, led by James Spader as William Bilbo, proceed to make “house calls,” to those still sitting on the fence. So you get the idea. All of this tends to jettison anything we thought we knew—and certainly a lot we had mythologized—about the 16th president of the United States. And thanks to a transformative performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, Spielberg’s masterpiece offers us a portrait of the troubled, cunning leader that is monumentally intimate.
Day-Lewis is not simply a brilliant actor inhabiting his role. He is the man portrayed, right down to the cracker barrel voice, the poignant awkward hands, the haunted profile, and the flashes of searing rage. The film builds itself around his portrayal of Lincoln and as large and three-dimensional as it is, we simply cannot get enough of it. As the mercurial first lady, Sally Field is a stunning match for Day-Lewis. Worn to the core by bitterness and beset by migraines, Mary Lincoln is ruled by her ghosts as much as she overcomes them through sheer spitfire tenacity. The loss of their first-born has almost reduced this couple to conjugal numbness. But not quite. Mementoes of their love are implied through bedroom doorways and searing confrontations over the pain that keeps them together.
The film’s towering views of raw human agony come not in the battlefield acreage of horrific, glorious corpses. They erupt as Lincoln, composure frayed by Mary’s emotional binging, roars back at his wife about his own unendurable grief. Spielberg has given us, in this scene and many others, his best understanding of human nature, its highest potential and the frailty that underscores it. I am at a loss to understand just how he did it, but the best response I can make is to see the film again. It is a true fable for grownups, and yes, for Americans who wonder just how we got to the exact moment of history we now inhabit.
