Spielberg’s latest feature succeeds as more than a biopic

By Will Ross

Even Steven Spielberg’s detractors agree on this much: his movies make people feel good. But those critics insist that he is too eager to please; an empty moralizer; a charlatan. To them, his histories are worst of all: he introduces mass audiences to issues like racism, the toll of war, or the Holocaust, and then he resolves them. Resolves the Holocaust, for Christ’s sakes!

They’re not wrong about that. But so it is for the best of Spielberg’s “grown-up” works: they resolve the irresolvable. And so it is with Lincoln.

The film follows the efforts of Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) to pass the 13th amendment that forever abolished slavery in the US. The American civil war between the northern Union and southern Confederacy is drawing to a close, and Lincoln knows that if he does not pass the amendment now by purporting that it will help to end the war (by means of emancipated soldiers and a crippled southern economy), the war will end anyway, as will the support of a voting public that still has no use for racial equality unless it brings their sons and husbands home. To persuade his cabinet and earn the votes of Congress, Lincoln employs political trickery, pleading, and bribery. Day-Lewis plays the role astoundingly well, not as an icon, but as a pragmatist, still grieving for his tuberculosis-felled son. Externally, he is a charismatic and humble storyteller of folksy charms — a persona of political design.

[pullquote]Men are asked to sacrifice what they hold dear, and often to reward the unworthy, in order to pass the bill.[/pullquote]

Aiding and opposing him are a supporting cast of uniform excellence, though none more excellent than Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, a radical whose insistence on not only abolition, but complete legal and political equality, threatens to scare the more timid congressmen from lending the bill their decisive votes.

The dilemma thus faced by Stevens lies at the heart of Tony Kushner’s stunningly literate screenplay. Men are asked to sacrifice what they hold dear, and often to reward the unworthy, in order to pass the bill. In a peace conference with Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens, Lincoln admits that to end the war, Stephens must give up his culture and way of life. It is not revenge or blackmail; it is simply the price that must be paid.

All creative parties show masterful craftsmanship. Every choice — be it of Michael Kahn’s cutting, John Williams’s score, Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography and the direction of Spielberg himself — is one of utmost motivation and restraint. The result is a quiet film of immense suspense and emotional effect — you know how it turns out, but you will grip your seat as the house casts its votes.

It’s not the saintly vision of Abe you’d find on a five-dollar bill — this is, to be sure, a broken democracy — but nor is it an expose of what he was “really like.” Lincoln is uninterested in the oft-drawn biopic dichotomy of man vs. myth. It aims for neither hagiography nor documentary; history books can do that job better. Instead, it asks that we halt our dreams and renounce our egos if it is in the interest of peace and principle. We needn’t believe that we can resolve the irresolvable. But we must at least try, and Spielberg is right to ask that of us.