As Spielberg mentioned in the production notes, “In this day and age when so many people have lost faith in the idea of governance, it’s a story that shows that you can achieve miraculous, beautiful things through the democratic system.”
The Script of ‘Lincoln’
Published in 2005, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 944-page mega-bestseller, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” provided just the ingredients that Spielberg had been hoping to find in order to tell a Lincoln story. Out of that massive tome, he and writing superstar Tony Kushner settled on telling the story of the 16th president’s passing of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: the abolition of slavery.
This particular slice of Honest Abe’s life distills his essence. It provides insight into his family life, emotional life, and political genius. It’s packed with suspense, drama, and crisis. Can Lincoln end slavery—and hold the Union together—before the South surrenders?
To the Manor Born
Similar to Ben Kingsley being born to play Gandhi, Daniel Day-Lewis was born to play Abraham Lincoln. Day-Lewis simply is him. The hair and makeup is brilliant, and Day-Lewis utterly inhabits the 6-foot-4-inch gangling ranginess and faltering walk.
Despite the somber weightiness of those ancient sepia-toned historical images, America’s 16th POTUS is brought to life as an avuncular, prolifically jokey raconteur, and although one assumes a man of that size and historical gravitas to be a basso profundo, Day-Lewis nails the president’s real voice, which was apparently surprisingly tenor. (It’s a sort of Mike Tyson moment.) And then you immediately acclimatize and have the odd, slightly eerie sensation of feeling in your bones that this was the definitive voice, and here it is, speaking to you out of the distant past. In a split second, one moves from “Oh, there’s Daniel playing Abraham” to a wholesale suspension of disbelief—we witness Lincoln. Movie magic indeed.
Sally Field, if not heavily supervised, will normally suck all the air out of a room, but not here. As Mary Todd Lincoln, she grounds the great man’s wife in believability, while leaving lingering questions as to the validity of the classic phrase “Behind every great man, there’s a great woman.” As per this great “Lincoln,” there’s a woman, in any case.
John Williams’s cello-laden score and the chiaroscuro dark browns, blacks, muted blues, and hazy grays evoke deep American nostalgia as surely as do the words Antietam, Fort Sumter, Ticonderoga, William Tecumseh Sherman, Gettysburg, Confederacy, and Martha Washington.
It takes a minute to downshift to a time where things moved slower, people memorized political speeches, quoted Euclid, and savored sophisticated insults. Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens has a great line: “Slavery is the only insult to natural law, you fatuous nincompoop.”
Pick Your Battles
In the aftermath of “Lincoln,” one feels like one has come to know the man. One feels the warmth, love of humanity, and the high moral stature on display in his attempts to change history and save people. In one of the movie’s most powerful scenes, President Lincoln rides out on horseback to witness Civil War battlefield carnage. He is stunned and at a loss for words.
There should be an amendment to the Constitution that all American presidents be required to get astride a horse and personally go see the carnage of their wars. “Lincoln” illustrates the weightiness of the decisions a U.S. president must carry.
For Lincoln-like times, may the high moral stature, humor, and courage on display in “Lincoln” shine the light of hope on the path of all future American leaders.
