Lincoln

Well I finally got around to seeing Lincoln, and I was very impressed.  The movie only catches the last four months of Lincoln’s presidency but does a superb job of bringing other major events of the President’s life to the audience’s attention.  Lincoln is shown in a way that gives you a brief biography of his life and particularly his Presidency; much more information is shared in this movie than the four months the movie covers.

The movie begins in January 1865 and ends on April 15^th of the same year, the day Lincoln died after being shot the night before. Most of the movie is dedicated to the political work of passing the 13^th amendment, which sounds uninteresting but proved to be anything but.  The story is made interesting by exploring and dramatizing some of the events associated with the passing and necessity of the 13^th amendment. 

I have read the book the movie is partially based on and one other Lincoln biography, and almost everything I saw in the movie was true to the Lincoln that was developed in the books.  There were many events that were not in the books but after a little bit of googling it appears the script was quite true to history. (For example, Team of Rivals hardly discusses Thaddeus Stevens and the actual debates in the House or the process taken to buy votes for the amendment but the interpretation shown in the movie appears to be quite accurate according to what I found) The cabinet sessions are a little too dramatic in my opinion, but not much.  I think that Lincoln may have had a black butler/servant but I think his and Elizabeth Keckley’s (Mary Todd Lincoln’s black friend) role may have been exaggerated in the movie; but it fits with the theme of the movie and it shows Lincoln’s personal friendliness and sympathy to the blacks of the time. The only unfortunate part is that Lincoln’s personal friendliness toward blacks could have been shown through a completely true story involving Frederick Douglass at Lincoln’s second inaugural party.  But I am not a filmmaker and the audience understands sufficiently who Lincoln was through the black characters in the film, it just took a little exaggeration of minor characters. 

The best part in the movie is Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln.  He brought to life the person that many have tried to put together in their head.  Lincoln was melancholy yet jovial; a beacon of joy and happiness, yet prone to depression.  It has always been hard to rationalize these aspects of Lincoln’s character but Mr. Lewis played such a real person while yet displaying all these attributes that the movie made Lincoln come alive.  I was glad that the movie showed Lincoln telling some of his moralistic and fun stories (I know his tale of the portrait of George Washington in the restroom was one Lincoln would share, and thus I assume the rest were Lincoln’s as well).  Lincoln loved to be ‘with the boys’ as it showed in the movie and many attribute this to his love of male fellowship (Although some people do believe that Lincoln was gay I am not implying that he was nor do most serious historians believe Lincoln was gay) and partially to his possibly bipolar wife who made home life difficult at times.  Either way he loved to sit around, tell stories, and laugh with friends.  He would often laugh raucously at his own jokes.  I felt as if it showed this aspect of Lincoln in the movie very well and made me feel as if we could actually see Lincoln having a night at the office with the boys.

The cabinet meetings in the movie were used largely to illustrate the situation that the President was in and also to show Lincoln’s ability to lead.  Lincoln invited many different viewpoints into his cabinet and many times they disagreed with his tactics or even his goals.  His ability to consider these viewpoints and formulate a policy is one way Lincoln’s genius was apparent.  His most trusted aid in his cabinet was his Secretary of State, William Seward.  Team of Rivals (the book on which the movie is partially based) is largely a book about Lincoln’s relationship with Seward, a relationship that just could not be fully expressed in this two and a half hour movie.  The movie does a fair job of showing how their professional relationship worked but what is not shown is their personal friendship that developed throughout Lincoln’s presidency.  The most interesting part of their relationship is that Seward was largely seen as a shoe-in for the Republican nomination but was upset by a country lawyer from Illinois whom many people caricatured as a western backwoodsman.  Seward felt that Lincoln was beneath him in capabilities, stature, and worthiness of the Presidency.  Seward was one of Lincoln’s first and most important converts of his genius and they became incredible allies and friends and that this could not be fully expressed in the movie is unfortunate.

The movie is based on such a complex and incredible person, who is portrayed so well and so deeply that any criticism I have is merely a criticism of a constraint of time and format that is inherent in film.  I could not have imagined a film of our sixteenth president to be so well researched, planned, and presented.  I thought this film would be great and it exceeded all my expectations.