Politics is such a soiled playground, we’ve forgotten it was once
peppered by great statesman with honour and ethics. It comes as a jolt
of pleasurable surprise when confronted with the dramatically engaging
and morally uplifting Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, as skilfully recreated by Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis.
The time is January 1865, America is still bleeding with the ongoing
Civil War, but Lincoln (Day-Lewis) is poised on the cusp of writing
history — seeing the North win and slavery abolished, if he can somehow
push through the unpopular 13th Amendment in the House of
Representatives.
But here is the crux of the matter — if the war is won before the
Amendment is passed, it will not go through and will be resisted by the
Southern States. Yet, even as Lincoln’s lobbyists (that include James
Spader) are trying to drum up support for the unpopular bill among
Democrats and Republicans, three commissioners from the Confederacy head
up to Washington City wanting to negotiate peace.
It becomes a nail-biting race against time, a chessboard battle of wits,
nerve and legalese with Lincoln poised, no stooped, over the game
board, nudging, moving, cajoling, calculating — with no guarantee of an
assured win.
To create such absorbing drama is no small feat when you are dealing
with history and known outcomes. Kudos to Tony Kushner’s screenplay —
based partly on Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
– which is astonishingly effective. Unusually, it is a wordy screenplay
that never loses the magic of the moment to verbiage — even as it
allows politicians the privilege of exchanging linguistically complex
insults or Lincoln, his quirky penchant for telling stories.
Spielberg’s strength has always been storytelling — and he excels in
that here, aided by long-time collaborator, cinematographer Janusz
Kaminski. The sombre mood and look of the time are painstakingly
recreated, even as Spielberg keeps the focus taut; we are allowed entry
into the agile mind of the President and his humanist heart as he
negotiates on several battlefields.
Lincoln has to contend not only with the Democrats who hate the proposed
amendment — but also negotiate with people on his side such as
Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) or difficult
mavericks such as the fiery Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones). If his
highly-strung wife Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) still blames him for
the death of their son Willie, there’s also a living son, Robert (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt), who wants to defy his parents and enlist.
Day-Lewis nails his Lincoln — physically with the beard, stoop and
springy hair he effortlessly morphs into the President. With delicacy,
rather than any ponderous sense of history, he assumes Lincoln’s many
mantles: the man who is haunted by the death of his son, the ongoing war
and the injustice of slavery; the lawyer and statesman who plots his
way to pushing through the 13th Amendment; the amusing raconteur; the
president who knows his power.
