“I
could write shorter sermons, but when I get started I’m too lazy to stop,” said
Abraham Lincoln, 150 years ago and quoting a rhetorical preacher.
What better motive to be brief: Working
from a screenplay by Tony Kushner (“Angles in America”), Steven Spielberg’s
near-miraculous masterpiece “Lincoln” isn’t
a full-life bio-pic of the 16th president, but a careful, smart
study of the man’s final months in office as he tried to end the Civil War and pass
the 13th amendment fully abolishing slavery, fearful his Emancipation Proclamation will fall useless once the nation re-unites.
“Lincoln” –- at its most basic -- may be about legislation, yet it plays
out as the most nail-biting, and, yes, funny thriller of our time, for no
reason more so than this is about the true, ugly birth of America, where all
men are created equal. (Women waited longer for equality; the gay population
still waits its turn, Kushner makes apparent.)
Leaving behind old tricks and sentimental
streaks found even in “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg has made a time-capsule story
where the fights inside smoky rooms seem like found-footage from 1865. With our nation again
deeply divided over everything from budgets to gun control, “Lincoln” almost
seems a warped, darkly ironic mirror and wake-up call for today.
His own miracle maker, Daniel Day-Lewis
brings Lincoln to life in astonishing detail –- high voice, striking bouts of anger
and compassion, an endless tenacity for jokes
and asides that charm some men and drive others mad. Day-Lewis again has topped
himself, even with his volcanic performance in “There Will Be Blood.”
This is
no liberal party, though: There’s a scene where
Day-Lweis as Lincoln is placed across from famed abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens
(Tommy Lee Jones), and the latter barks, “It’s called leadership, you should
try it for a change.” That is a blistering order to Obama. (And, yes, the movie nails that it was Democrats in the oh-so-wrong here, reluctant to see slavery fall, whilst Republicans -- liberal ones -- fought to end it. Dems were conservatives back then. Irony.)
The acting all around is the best of the year, the cast inspired by the script, the ideals on screen by Kushner? Who knows. Enjoy it. This good a cast is rare. Jones and Sally
Field (as Mary Todd) are equal to Day-Lewis at
every turn to the point when husband and wife rip each other over son Willie’s
death, the audience -– I –- felt as if I were a eavesdropper.
Even 10
minutes too long past a poignant stopping point, this is -- for now -- the Best Film of 2012,
worthy of a long sermon and national viewing and consideration. And here I stop,
not too lazy. A
