One more plug for the top 100 prospects package, which starts with the top 25 players with scouting reports. Thanks to all of you who’ve read, offered feedback, caught typos, or signed up for the first time this week.
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Lincoln is a fine film about the man we would all like to believe was our 16th President, a hagiography so thorough in its depiction of Lincoln as a latter-day saint that it reminded me of the likely apocryphal story of George M. Cohan’s reaction to the film about his own life, Yankee Doodle Dandy: “It was a good movie. Who was it about?”
I find it hard to imagine that Abraham Lincoln was anywhere near as perfect a man as Steven Spielberg’s movie would have us believe he was. In the film, which largely covers the month of January, 1865, and Lincoln’s efforts to get the wartime House of Representatives to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery in the United States. It’s not the ideal subject matter for a lengthy drama, one that involves a whole lot of talking (in language that feels stilted today and may have even been so for the time) and not much else, nor does such a short period of time and such a binary issue of right and wrong lend itself to a thorough character study. Titling the film The Thirteenth Amendment rather than Lincoln would have been more accurate, although I imagine it would have hurt ticket sales and perhaps even awards buzz.
Daniel Day-Lewis is superb as Lincoln in a performance that has been largely sweeping the major acting awards so far this season, although he may be receiving too much credit for the consistency and power of his portrayal of the man’s bearing and accent, as the character on the screen lacks much depth. The worst thing you can say about this version of Lincoln is that he’s willing to trade a handful of patronage jobs to secure passage of an amendment that would free millions of people from bondage. He is otherwise unflawed, a devoted husband, a pillar of strength in his family and for his country, a tireless leader fully committed to his principles of freedom and some form of equality. Day-Lewis looks the part, and sounds the part, but was the part really as complex as his mantle full of trophies might indicate?
The somewhat two-dimensional nature of Lincoln’s character opens the door for Tommy Lee Jones to steal a few scenes as the cantankerous Representative Thaddeus Stevens, a radical Republican (back when that party stood for something very different) and staunch abolitionist whose speeches in favor of the Amendment are shown as pivotal to its passage. Lincoln may have the best monologues, but Stevens gets the one-liners, and Jones gets to stretch a little more, especially in the range of emotions required for his role. Beyond Jones, the film is packed with white character actors you’ll recognize and spend a few minutes trying to place, including a few veterans of The Wire, as well as a brief appearance by David Oyelowo, who played Danny on the first few seasons of the British series MI-5. These roles seem to be more focused on historical accuracy than depth of character, with the same applying to Sally Field’s nuance-less portrayal of the neurotic Mary Todd Lincoln, a role in which she practically wrings her hands off their wrists.
The story opens in early January of 1865, as Lincoln has just won re-election but, as was true until the passage of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933, must deal with a lame-duck Congress until March 4th, at which point the numbers will shift more strongly in Lincoln’s favor. Lincoln chooses, over the counsel of his tiny Cabinet, to push for passage of the Amendment even though the House had been stalling since the Senate’s passage of it the previous April. Lincoln indicates that he wants to use the threat of passage as a way to force the South’s hand and encourage their surrender, beginning a series of horse-trades and slight deceptions that gradually line up the required votes in the House. The most interesting of these scenes, however, don’t involve Day-Lewis, who is so thoroughly embedded in his depiction of Lincoln that he precludes the potential for balanced dialogue (which may simply be the fault of Tony Kushner’s script) when he’s on the screen.
This shouldn’t really spoil anything in the film, but the amendment does, in fact, pass the House with about fifteen minutes left in the movie, meaning we get the great climax and then a bunch of housecleaning scenes, including the South’s capitulation at Appamattox and, of course, Lincoln’s assassination, shown off-screen and handled in the most perfunctory manner. The film could just as easily ended with Lincoln’s reaction after the climactic vote, but finishing his personal story at the movie’s conclusion felt forced given how little of his personal story appeared elsewhere in the film. It’s not really a biopic, but the story of a specific political endeavor, and tacking on the war’s end and Lincoln’s death was, at best, unnecessary.
Although the script was written and the film completed before the 2012 Presidential election, I thought there might be some faint parallels intentionally built into the movie. We now have a liberal President, entering a second term, pushing issues of freedom – with lower stakes than slavery, but, whether we’re talking about the War on Women or marriage equality, still matters of liberty and equal rights – while trying to wind down not one but two unpopular wars. Lincoln used the political capital of his second term to try to push through a morally justified but not overwhelmingly popular amendment to the constitution. Is Kushner encouraging President Obama to cash in some of his political capital to fight for specific causes, like marriage equality? I concede I may be reading far too much into the film, but the parallels seemed too strong to ignore.
I’ve now seen seven of the nine Best Picture nominees, all but Les Miserables and Amour, and while Lincoln may very well win the award, I couldn’t give you a competent argument that it should. I wouldn’t rate it higher than fourth, behind Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, and Argo, and if you want to tell me it should be behind Life of Pi I won’t fight you on it. Day-Lewis is a lock to win the Best Actor award, but since I’ve only seen one of the other nominees’ performances – Brad Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook – I can’t offer an opinion on that one. Jones shouldn’t beat out Christoph Walz (Django) for Best Supporting Actor, while Field is probably going to be trounced by Anne Hathaway for Best Supporting Actress and would be behind Jacki Weaver (SLP) on my ballot anyway. (All links in this paragraph go to my reviews of those films.)
Lincoln was based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s hefty, critically-acclaimed book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
“Lincoln”, in my opinion, was the most frustrating damn movie I ever watched. The directing, the acting, the cinematography, was all top notch. I loved Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance. John WIlliams’ score was incredible. When you add all that up and and add a heavy splash of a script that is drenched in mediocrity, it ruins it. It was like pouring bad creamer in a great cup of coffee. It was uneven and lacking. There’s a good bit of the film that has nothing to do with Lincoln and everything to do with Thaddeus Stevens. And how is the assassination scene not in the theater he was shot in? Why do we have to hear about another crowd’s reaction to it?
I can’t ignore all the greatness of the film but it’s almost worse than watching a really bad movie. We know “The Last Stand” is going to suck before we watch it. But when a film like this fails to meet my expectations, it’s worse. “Argo”, “Django”, “Zero Dark Thirty”, and “Silver Linings Playbook” are fantastic films. “Lincoln” should have been but is far from it.
I think most of the limitations you note are a direct result of the focus on the Thirteenth Amendment, which I thought was sort of bizarre and a waste of the talent assembled for the film. Good movie, but pretty disappointed that the only use of DDL as Lincoln will be for something this shallow.
Keith – regarding this passage:
“I find it hard to imagine that Abraham Lincoln was anywhere near as perfect a man as Steven Spielberg’s movie would have us believe he was.”
I’d be interested to see if your perspective changes after reading Team of Rivals, which i’d highly recommend although you dont seem to be a fan of non-fiction. I’ve just finished it… Kearns Goodwin’s depiction of Lincoln is extremely thorough and lends credence to the idea that Lincoln was almost a “perfect man” as you say, with uncommon and profound qualities. As such, i didnt view Lincoln (which only spans a small sliver of Team of Rivals) as a “hagiography” as you put it.
Hi Keith,
Just read the Goodwin book last week. You’d like it more than you did the movie.
The entirety of the movie comprises less than ONE CHAPTER of the book, the very last chapter. I really am wondering where the source material for the movie came from, because much of it is not even in the book. Stevens is mentioned maybe twice. The back stories on the representatives that had to be convinced to switch votes is not in the tome at all, etc.
I will say, If you think the movie idealizes Lincoln, then the book elevates him to sainthood. Goodwin did an exhaustive job of documenting the life and times of him, William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates, but there’s hardly a negative word about the president in 944 pages.
(Amour, by the way, is a fine, fine movie. You get find it on the torrents, along with Les Miz and all the others. But you may have philosophical objections to doing so. )
On another note, CRUSHED about the change in the podcast. Really will miss listening to you guys every day. I live in Phoenix, so perhaps I’ll find out at Chase or a Spring Training game. On Twitter, I’m NotThatBobJames. (I met up with your pal Molly there last year when she was there doing the Kemp piece.)
Keith, did you see the movie Flight? Granted, I haven’t seen all the Best Picture nominees but I came out of Flight thinking it was one of the better movies I had seen in recent memory.
Aside from the fact that certain aspects of the crash scene were so farfetched and almost humorous, which felt out of place in a fairly serious scene, the rest of the movie was outstanding. The script was original and unique yet familiar and extremely compelling. And I can’t think of a single moment in which I thought the actors should have played things differently. Again, the only weakness was probably the one ridiculously unrealistic moment just before the plane crashed.
Good review, KLaw.
For what it’s worth, Lincoln was indeed a great deal more troubled and troubling than the film portrays him. For starters, in the very early days in his presidency he hosted Frederick Douglas and other key free blacks and told them “America would best be a one race country, so you should look into leading a colony outside America.” You’ll notice that Frederick Douglas is entirely absent from the film. Spielburg could have made the film far more nuanced if he simply had a 45-second scene where Douglas wonders about the incongruity of a president who literally told him the black race had no future in America was now the driving force behind an Amendment to end slavery.
PBS recently had a series on the Abolonist movement and how it developed over the the decades before the Civil War, and its primary source readings were impressive on Lincoln’s historical stances on slavery.
That said, although Lincoln would most certainly have been an “Appeaser” of slavey, he was not an appeaser when it came to secession, and while bigoted in his own ways, he did indeed stand firm to lead the country with extraordinary firmness and dexterity in ultimately awful circumstances.
One of the great what-ifs of American History is what would have happened if a) Lincoln hadn’t been shot, or even b) Lincoln had chosen a different Vice President. Because he wanted to earn some favor with southern border states (and had genuine fear that he might lose his re-election bid in the fall of 1864) he chose Andrew Johnson, a drunkard and an idiot (but a popular figure from Tennessee). Johnson famously had to be pulled off stage during his drunken inaugural address mere weeks before the assassination.
Johnson was supposed to be a passive, do-nothing VP but Lincoln’s death changed all of that and we got a truly chaotic Reconstruction period. Lincoln or a more capable man, would have likely done things far differently.
Keith, your points are well taken. May I add that I felt like the scene depicting the actual voting for the passage of the amendment made it feel like the whole outcome was completely arbitrary and dependent on the spontaneous whim of a couple of Congressman changing their votes at the last minute. Perhaps it is accurate, but if so it makes me feel that Lincoln had less to do with the passage than implied. It was an accident of history as opposed to a political crusade. Or at it’s best, a change of conscience pressured by cultural and moral forces, but not the machinations of a political genius maneuvering the levers of government.
The scene prior to that, when Lincoln yells at his proxies “Get me those 2 votes!” would characterize him as simply a bully, offering no means or strategy whatsoever. Moreover we get no indication of how (or even if) these proxies were able to affect the change of votes. The entire movie is devoted to his efforts to pass the amendment, yet I felt that the outcome was not his to celebrate. It was serendipity or good forutne or just plain dumb luck.
@Shaun: I haven’t seen Flight but might rent it in the next few weeks.
@Bob: Sorry about the podcast but I do hope to have something new to announce soon.
@Ben: I agree. That focus made the end of the film just seem superfluous.
@Nick: How about Johnson’s complete absence from the film? I thought that was really odd. If he was a drunk and a do-nothing, fine, but to omit him entirely?
@ranbricker: I struggled with describing that voting scene. It was high drama, but we knew the conclusion, but we didn’t know how we’d get there, but Congressmen were changing their votes on the fly, but we’d never seen most of them before anyway. Felt a little arbitrary in the analysis, but it was also reasonably fun to watch as it happened.
“We now have a liberal President, entering a second term, pushing issues of freedom”
My mind boggled when I read this line.
Keith, wondering you saw the HBO miniseries Sam Adams and your thoughts on that. I highly recommend it.
@NickChristie
your first paragraph drastically mischaracterizes Lincoln’s relationship with Frederick Douglass with respect to the timeline of this movie. you are right that in the early days Lincoln was in favor of colonization, and Douglass was a strong critic. (by the way, Frederick Dougals was not at the meeting Lincoln had with free black clergymen like you say – they first met in 1863). Lincoln’s views on blacks changed dramatically over the course of his presidency. And, in fact, Lincoln rejected any proposals for an early end to the war – which he strongly desired – that did NOT involve an unconditional agreement to abolish slavery on behalf of the Southern states. this is despite strong pressure in 1864 from Democrats who wanted to strike an agreement to end the war, re-establish the Union, and allow the Southern states to keep slavery intact, despite the fact that this view put Lincoln in serious danger of losing his bid for a 2nd term.
In fact, Lincoln and Douglass struck up a strong and lasting friendship, beginning with their first meeting in 1863. So while you may have desired a 45-second scene between Lincoln and Douglass that would have shown any awkwardness between the two, however, if Douglass had been in the movie, an accurate portrayal in late 1864/ early 1865 would have shown very friendly interactions.
if you want to argue that the movie should have portrayed a broader time period, that’s one thing, but your conclusion that “Spielburg could have made the film far more nuanced if he simply had a 45-second scene where Douglas wonders about the incongruity of a president who literally told him the black race had no future in America was now the driving force behind an Amendment to end slavery” is misguided for the shown time period.
my apologies for the screwed up grammar in the above post – i hit “post” without editing that stream of consciousness!
Honestly, how can anyone know how accurately DDL portrayed Lincoln? Seriously!
Wow. “War on Women?”, really? A liberal president pushing issues of freedom?
Liberties? NDAA?
Obama much?
Few points:
1. While “Lincoln” is ostensibly based on “Team of Rivals,” its real source was clearly Michael Vorenberg’s “Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment.” There are quite a few details in the movie that appear only in Vorenberg’s book.
2. Perhaps the movie seemed hagiographic, but I think you–Keith–would find it less so if you took a look at some of the other Lincoln portrayals in cinema–Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, etc. For my part, I thought the movie did a lot to make Lincoln more human and fallible.
3. Nick Christie: I think your grasp of this material is a little shaky, or at least is presented in a misleading fashion. As others have observed, you don’t properly characterize the development of Lincoln’s relationship with Douglass. More importantly, you are implying that Lincoln was something of a white supremacist/segregationist whose views on African Americans were not much different from those to be found in the South. In fact, Lincoln was a pragmatist, who believed there was no realistic way for freed slaves and Southern whites to co-exist in the same geographical space. Given what happened in the 100 years after Lincoln’s death, can you really say he was wrong?
4. And finally, to address Keith’s question about Andrew Johnson, I don’t think his absence from the film was curious at all. He was serving as military governor of Tennessee for most of the time period covered by the film. He did not come to Washington until March of 1865, and was a minor player in the events of the film that took place after his arrival. The absence of the man who served as vice-president through Lincoln’s first term–Hannibal Hamlin–is not particularly odd, either, as Hamlin played a very small role in the administration.
While I thank you guys for correcting me regarding Douglass not meeting Lincoln face-to-face until 1863, I am surprised at how unimportant you feel Lincoln’s pre-war and early war thoughts on slavery are in regards to his overall character.
I direct you to the following pieces and facts:
First: http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/lincoln/essays/lincoln-and-abolitionism
We see here direct reference to Lincoln’s public support of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1855, which earned him the scorn of Northern abolitionists. Lincoln was 46 at that time. That act was particularly heinous, as it produced bounty hunters taking whatever black person they could find on the ground that more than likely someone would pay them for them. Thad Stevens, based as he was in Eastern Pennsylvania (and therefore saw the flux of Bounty hunters coming ino his state from boardering Maryland) saw its horribleness with his own eyes and fought as a lawyer in the Penn Supreme Court on such matters. For more, see:
http://www.amazon.com/Thaddeus-Stevens-Nineteenth-Century-Hans-Trefousse/dp/0807856665
Second: http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=34&subjectID=3
In this piece we see many primary sources quoted that reveal Lincoln’s fervant belief in Black explusion from America and encouragement of Freed Black Colonization of distant lands.
We also have the following speech given in 1857 on the State Capital Building in Springfield, IL:
“I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. I have no right to say all the members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it…. Such separation, is ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing anything directly for colonization. Party operations at present only favor or retard colonization incidentally. The enterprise is a difficult one; but ‘when there is a will there is a way;’ and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”
Those are Abraham Lincoln’s words as a 48-year-old man already a renowned lawyer and politician. They speak for themselves, I think. I do not believe my above post mischaracterizes the man.
@Nick Christie
At risk of appealing to authority, I am a professional historian specializing in the Civil War era. I teach at a large university. I can assure you there is no primary or secondary source within your reach that I am not already aware of.
Now, let me make the following responses to your observations:
1. You are operating from a modern perspective, in which support for segregation (or colonization) is equal to racism. Ergo, you are concluding that because Lincoln supported colonization, he was a racist who disdained or disliked black people. While I am not claiming that Lincoln was William Lloyd Garrison in terms of a belief in total equality, your conclusion is simply not correct. I say again that Lincoln was a pragmatist who could not conceive of a way in which black and white could co-exist. While he may have held on to colonization as a solution to the problem for longer than he should have, it does not inherently speak to anti-black hostility. If nothing else, consider this: The African-American leader Marcus Garvey reached the same basic conclusion sixty years later. Was Marcus Garvey a racist?
2. You also evince a lack of awareness of the fact that politicians have to get elected, and so are often compelled to embrace positions they don’t wholly support, or to say things they don’t entirely believe. Thaddeus Stevens was a man of great conscience who undoubtedly believed in racial equality and deplored slave-catching and other slavery-related evils. He also represented the most liberal district in Pennsylvania, full of anti-slavery Quakers. This made his strong views politically viable, in much the same way that Charles Sumner of Massachusetts could get away with expressing strong abolitionist sentiments.
Lincoln, by contrast, was from Illinois, whose Northern regions were populated by working class migrants from the North and whose Southern regions were populated by farmers and other poor white migrants from the South. If Lincoln hoped to remain politically viable in that state, he did not have the luxury of opposing the Fugitive Slave Act (at least, not in 1855). Similarly, if he hoped to compete for votes in the Southern half of the state (particularly when he was competing with Stephen A. Douglas), he had to cater to a Southern worldview. If you were to make a list of the 10 most offensive things Lincoln ever said on the issue of race, I promise you that at least nine of the them would come from speeches made in the Southern half of Illinois during the 1857-58 contest for the U.S. Senate.
What I am saying, ultimately, is this: Do you assume that every word that comes out of Barack Obama’s mouth reflects EXACTLY how he feels? Or George Bush’s? Or Bill Clinton’s? Of course not. So why would you make that assumption with Lincoln? Doing this may not be admirable, but it is necessary to be effective in politics.
I don’t mean to be a Lincoln apologist, but you are engaging in some of the worst kinds of cherry-picking to create a picture of the man that I don’t believe is fair or terribly accurate.
Oh, and one more thing: You also assume–in your first post–that there is an incongruity between supporting colonization (which, to you, equals racism) and then also supporting the 13th Amendment. That is an incongruity to a citizen of the 21st century, but not to a citizen of the 19th century. To them, there were really three different questions to wrestle with: (1) Is slavery good an economic institution, (2) Is it morally justifiable to enslave Africans, and (3) Are Africans the equal of white men? Many Americans–including many abolitionists–answered ‘no’ to all three questions. Indeed, Frederick Douglass remarked many times on how racist he found many members of the abolitionist movement (and, by contrast, how refreshing were his interactions with Garrison and Lincoln)
Chris it is fantastic to have a Professional Historian chime in. I have a history degree from a top-10 school myself, and advanced degrees in other subjects from other top-10 schools, but I by no means have trouble with you pulling rank.
I am somewhat bemused at the voraciousness of your defense, however, as I’m not sure where I attacked Lincoln with such a broad brushstroke?
My posts stemmed from Keith’s opening paragraph, i.e. wondering if Lincoln the man was more imperfect then the Lincoln we saw in the film? I then have presented evidence that Lincoln the man was, in fact, imperfect. If you read my posts, I only point out that Lincoln was willing to Appease slave-supporters (something you chalk up to politics, but is nonetheless Appeasement regardless of motive).
I have tons of admiration for Lincoln, both as a man and as a president. Believe me, I sing his praises CONSTANTLY, particularly when defending our current President, Barack Obama.
Equally, I feel that it’s appropriate for a White hero in our landscape to be fully unveiled so that the modern American understands his full stances in regards to slavery, and I think it very, very fascinating that as a Politician in his 40s Lincoln both supported the Fugitive Slave Act and Freed Black Colonization.
I am somewhat bewildered that you and others have spent so much effort attacking me for my “cherry-picking” of Lincoln’s own speeches… he said these things over a three-year period :). I’m not trying to “defame” Lincoln as a horrible racist. I am, however, trying to illustrate that he wasn’t merely a Moses-like prophet with a perfect record in fighting slavery. I think his speeches are important for all Americans to know, and yet I think 90% of Americans only know his war speeches… why is it, Chris, that despite your own clearly well-nuanced understanding of Lincoln and the Politics of the Age, you have so unwaveringly defended a man, that at minimum, was complex?
I find the posts from everyone fascinating, particularly because all I’ve suggested and pointed out is that Lincoln’s public stances on racism and slavery were often pretty non-consistent with those for which we remember him. I think that reality should allow us to really ponder what that means.
Isn’t that a rational question to ask, particularly of a Legend?
By the way, I’m enjoying this discourse immensely. It’s hard to have online conversations in the digital age that do not degenerate into something entirely unproductive.
Yeah, the underappreciated-white-male-character-actor cameos were fantastic. Gail! MacGyver’s helicopter pilot! The boyfriend from Girls! The Greek! THE GREEK!
What is the “War on Women”?
and who is waging it?
I had to be crass, but basically my perception of the WOW canard is that it’s a code phrase used to defend a woman’s “right” to kill a fetus.
Alejandra: you’re not being crass. You’re being ignorant. Look at the histories of the Violence against Women Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, or the Lily Ledbetter Act, for starters – and that’s before we get into issues like access to birth control, mandating transvaginal ultrasounds before abortions, the so-called “rape exemption,” or the Franken Amendment (2588 to HR 3326). Distilling this simply to a question of abortion rights is an indication that you haven’t examined the issue closely enough.
@Nick Christie, I am with you on your views that Lincoln was very nuanced and not a “perfect” man in the least bit…as you say, his initial support of the Fugitive Slave Act was indefensible and corrected by his pragmatic approach over time as he, gratefully, changed his views on this abhorent subject. Of more respect, as chris mentions, is the life-long crusade carried on by William Lloyd Garrison, whose unswaying and heroic fight to eradicate slavery is a long-time forgotten story, probably due to his un-dramatic and diplomatic means to the end. We have more exposure to the workings of John Brown (the Christopher Dorner of the 19th Century) because of his violent answers to the horrors of slavery.