Lincoln

After almost eight years, I am finding it harder to keep this blog fresh and current, but I’ve just seen a new film that urges me to break silence and make a strong recommendation.  Even though the last Steven Spielberg-Tony Kushner collaboration (Munich) was a film I abominated, and though I tend to find Daniel Day-Lewis admirable but over-mannered, Lincoln (2012, MC-86) is not just my pick for the best film of the year so far, but the most convincing and moving portrayal ever of Lincoln, or indeed of any President.  Not to mention the most truthful depiction of Congressional debate, the liveliest reenactment of historical controversy, and a riveting entertainment to boot.  My highest praise is that it did not strike me as Spielbergian at all, until a few over-emphatic wobbles near the end.  Beyond Day-Lewis and his uncanny verbal and physical impersonation of old (semi-) Honest Abe, David Strathairn is excellent as William Seward, Tommy Lee Jones a delight as Thaddeus Stevens, and Sally Field a revelation as Mary Todd Lincoln.  As a trio of shady political operators buying votes for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (freeing the slaves for real after the wartime expedient of the Emancipation Proclamation), James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson shine in small but significant roles.  As do a host of faces familiar from excellent tv series, Gale from Breaking Bad, Lane from Mad Men (as Grant!), Boyd from Justified, Arnold Rothstein from Boardwalk Empire, even Lena Dunham’s creepy boyfriend from Girls, among other notables.  While such familiarity might have been distracting, they each look and act the part in a way that simply makes it easier to keep such a crowded canvas coherent.  I confess that I am a sucker for the Civil War as a subject (and the antebellum era even more), but that only makes me more impressed with the quality and truthfulness of historical representation in this movie.  I would have sniffed out phoniness and withheld any suspension of disbelief.  As it was, I was enraptured, transported, convinced.