By Michael Scoular (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 21, 2012
The problem of where to begin talking about or showing something as great and repeatedly interpreted as Abraham Lincoln is solved by screenwriter Tony Kushner by zeroing in on one vote, one sequence of politicking, meeting and doing. In this case it’s the contested 13th amendment to the constitution, and within that partisan battle, the question of if it is for the ideas that will touch others or for personal gain this argument is being carried through high profile ballot. It’s a question that doesn’t feel out of place in any era, and yet director Steven Spielberg does not conflate time periods.
Rather, Spielberg is concerned with burrowing into the faces behind the figures behind the figures modern popular history has erected as symbols. The image of Lincoln is important here, and Daniel Day-Lewis does his method best to mimic the iconic voice and appearance, but Spielberg places him as only one part of a gigantic working country.
Lincoln is not the sole narrator of his own story—while some characters seem able to see that their actions will become a part of history, and this is something that makes Lincoln stand out as well—this is not the portrayal of a single, extraordinary man. There is a deep knowledge in Day-Lewis’ performance of physical limitations and the tact in slowness, deliberation, but manipulation can only travel so far. Lincoln is only someone Spielberg can cut to during the most important decision-making scenes, and once the engineering of creating support for Lincoln’s forced vote begins, the movie comes to belong to the numerous cast of character actors, in roles of heisted opinion (John Hawkes, James Spader) and, markedly similar to Lincoln, careful weighing of options (David Strathairn, Tommy Lee Jones). Lincoln is the extraordinary start, but there are uncountable interlocking pieces that must exist, and by Kushner’s chosen starting point have existed, beforehand.
Adolescence and before have always been associated with Spielberg, and so it is no surprise that they figure in strongly here. Lincoln’s relationship with his two sons Tad (Gulliver McGrath) and Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are suffused with alternate views – tender love and a stopping, slowing to the course of events in the first sense, a reactive discipline and fierce snappiness in the scenes of the second. And yet because of the wider expanse Spielberg details, not only do they not overtake the movie, though they appear fully formed within it, but by the time final actions are taken, they have been sidelined – just one of many, even if Spielberg trains his camera on them as centres rather than peripheral objects. In handling huge amounts of history, Spielberg both identifies a core that is felt in the best scenes of Lincoln, and leaves accounts and half-formed thoughts out, noticeable only because their effusive depiction is briefly there before it’s taken away. In one scene Mrs. Lincoln (Sally Field) bemoans the fact that everyone always has, and likely always will consider her nothing but Mrs. Lincoln, with no defining characteristic except rumoured hysteria.
Though Spielberg is unable to devote enough time or break from form to challenge this assertion, there is one solitary moment, when Field’s unsatisfying role is given new meaning. She speaks of the necessity of “[putting] on a face,” and in a single cut is transformed. It’s the economy of Spielberg’s tendency toward unsubtle ways, and as in the loving fades of Mrs. Narracott’s yarnwork in last year’s War Horse, even if it’s one instance, it is that one that remains in memory above all the rest.
Collaborating as always with editor Michael Kahn, composer John Williams (after the stirring overevocation of War Horse, it’s back to predictable grace notes), and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg, while trodding on familiar ground in a number of ways, expands beyond the expected in his images. While the camera trains, zooms in on important speakers, there is both a refusal to fall into the wonder of the Spielberg face. The closest comes in questions of reasons of voting, conditions of pardon, and receiving of telegram, and it is always met with weariness. Kushner’s dive into Lincoln’s second term is answered with Spielberg’s adaptation of his own source material. His famed single subjects (even in scenes like the massive crowds of Empire of the Sun or War of the Worlds, there is always a lead character to guide our attention) are so divided they spread across the screen. As in that exemplary scene involving Mrs. Lincoln, where a grand reception gives us multiple planes and points of (relatively) unguided attention, Spielberg in Lincoln steps back and gives us a wide(r)-screen view of people as occupying both backdrop and front and centre.
Young celebrity admirers open Lincoln, but the film that follows discards that assumption and tries to reconstitute an understanding of delegated power and leadership through compromise (mentioned as a self-deprecating criticism, it becomes a praiseworthy step in the end). Lincoln doesn’t achieve the silver brilliance of John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln, which dashes convention, all while maintaining an even keel between laughter and law, manipulation and melancholy, that Spielberg, despite his larger scope, cannot match. But in seemingly impossible, beautiful moments like the scene that ends the movie, or the way a meeting between Lincoln and Grant (Jared Harris) is cast about with shadowed soldiers, syllables drop away, and the culmination Spielberg seems to be reaching for appears within grasp.
