"Slavery, sir; it's done."
With these words, Daniel Day-Lewis's Lincoln has shattered Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens's dreams of a settled peace with the Union. Or, at the least, a return to the Union without emancipation. Cleverly realizing the shaky legal ground of the Emancipation Proclamation, Spielberg's Lincoln is desperate for a Constitutional amendment that will solidify its legality. Slavery is at the heart of this movie, and Spielberg doesn't shy away from the moral minefield of the Civil War. Impatient with anything other than the central issue of slavery as the driving force behind the Civil War, Lincoln narrates the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a document which eliminates slavery in any form from the Union.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Daniel Day-Lewis's Lincoln embodies the spirit of the sixteenth president, a man haunted by the specter of war, by the memory of his dead son, and by the driving impetus of history. He understands the unique place he's been granted, and ponders the decisions that have placed him in that moment. But he is a ruthless, dictatorial man, bent on accomplishing a mission that might just split the country anew. Though that mission is the complete abolition of slavery in the United States, we still see the burning passion of a man willing to push the Constitution beyond the breaking point to see it passed.
At his heart though, this Lincoln is a storyteller and a questioner. Wandering the halls of the War Department in the wee hours of the morning, he sits with soldiers and listens to their complaints and answers their questions. His parables explore deeper questions, hoping to unearth answers, yet comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Despite that comfort however, he remains deeply troubled by them.
These characteristics make Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln both human and humane, and we're treated to the intricacies of White House domestic life, as well as the personal politics played between husband and wife. Sally Fields is indomitable as Mary Todd Lincoln, who was as much a rock upon which the real Lincoln stood as the weight that bore him down. We see, too, the anguish of a father mourning for his son while embedded in a war that has riven a nation; we see the terror and heartbreak of a father desperate to keep another son from joining that war.
This isn't the whole Lincoln, of course. Glaringly absent is the Lincoln who may not have believed in racial equality, or the Lincoln who crafted policy based on his experience with Frederick Douglass. Furthermore, this is a movie that emphasizes the top-down nature of emancipation; slavery is abolished by white men; it is accomplished by the president. And though Spielberg gets issues of manhood right, he glosses over gender issues as political factors.
Ultimately, however, this is a biopic of a single man's experience with a great and terrible thing: The Civil War. That it happens to be Abraham Lincoln's experiences is almost immaterial. It is the story of a man striving to do something great with his life, believing he has been thrust into circumstances beyond his ability and understanding. It reminds me of Frodo Baggins lamenting his responsibility; he wishes none of this had come to him and Gandalf replies, "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
The movie, as such, is beautiful. It is intimately shot, and depicts the grit and grime of the period; John William's score is reminiscent of all his martial scores since Saving Private Ryan. With Janusz Kamiński as Director of Photography, a long-time associate of Spielberg's, the movie has the same quiet verisimilitude of most Spielberg movies. Ultimately, this is a stark, personal drama about the final days of President Lincoln, and his crusade to abolish slavery.
I would highly recommend this movie.
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