Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader
Steven Spielberg's epic Lincoln focuses on the final few months of the President's life which ultimately would help shape and define his enduring legacy. During this time, the Civil War was drawing to a close and Lincoln was pushing for the passage of the 13th Amendment to end slavery in the United States. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but this carried little legal weight and once the war ended, Lincoln believed that slavery would become a states' rights issue. In a moving and revealing speech to his cabinet, Lincoln outlines that the Emancipation was an exercise of his undefined war powers and without an amendment abolishing slavery, the Emancipation would be held up for years in courts and slavery would continue. It is during this speech we see that Abraham Lincoln would be portrayed in a way we hadn't seen before; as a plain-spoken man who understands the rules of politics and plays them to his advantage.
Does this go against the "Honest Abe" persona that Lincoln has been given throughout history? Yes it does, but it's ultimately more realistic. Lincoln wasn't above quid pro quo in order to get the amendment passed. He was a realist more than anything, knowing that a few rules would have to be bent in order for the greater good to prevail. Another major player in the amendment vote is Pennsylvania senator Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), a staunch abolitionist who understands that he needs to secure votes to pass the amendment. He sees that despite his feelings, the entire situation must be played very diplomatically.
In that sense, Lincoln focuses on the chess game that is politics. Very few movies have ever shown the political process in action like this one does. It shouldn't come as a surprise that politics went on almost the same as it does today, with compromises as a major component. I also saw Abraham Lincoln in a more intimate way than I ever have before. Lincoln is performed by Day-Lewis not as a man who knows he will have a secure place as one of our greatest Presidents, but as a pragmatist who is weary to the bone due to the war and the need to pass the 13th amendment. He has a folksy, self-effacing way of expressing himself, telling stories as a way to capture his audience enough to let his point sink in. When Lincoln dies, I didn't get the feeling that a giant had passed, but a person I knew had died.
I also admired Tommy Lee Jones' work as the crotchety Stevens, who has his own reasons to want the 13th Amendment passed. He and Lincoln have a chat at a party in which both understand without saying it that the failure to pass the amendment wasn't an option. There are plenty of moments in Lincoln in which much depends on what isn't said vs. what is said. Another wrinkle is presented by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Lincoln's eldest son who wants to join the Army despite the objections of his mother (Field), who is still grieving the loss of her younger son a few years before. Lincoln is truly caught in the middle between his son's desires and his wife's grief, which has kept a hold on her. This is yet another example of Lincoln's world being shown as one big gray area.
It would've been easy for Spielberg to present Lincoln as an overwrought historical drama with Lincoln delivering thundering speeches and everyone being in awe as if they read about him in history books that were printed 100 years later. By showing Lincoln as sometimes unsure, vulnerable, pragmatic, and human, it delivers a portrait of the man as well as the President that is touching.
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