Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, when our garden is frozen
and we have more time to be in town, we try to catch up with a few movies at
the Greenfield Garden Cinema. This
year we caught Spielberg’s Lincoln on
the Sunday before Christmas and enjoyed it, especially the acting. Critics have heaped praise on Daniel
Day-Lewis for his amazing portrayal of Lincoln, but all of the acting was
superb. Who would recognize Sally
“You-Really-Like-Me” Field as the terse Mary Todd Lincoln? Awards have also been rightly heaped on
Tommy Lee Jones for his performance as Thaddeus Stevens (who, by the way,
really did have a 23-year liaison with his “quadroon” [one quarter black] housekeeper). James Spader, Hal Holbrook, and David
Strathairn gave outstanding performances as did the less well-known actors. Janusz Kaminski’s award-winning low-light
cinematography, capturing the era in the sepia tones we associate with wood,
candles, and early photography, is also treat.
The film’s story-telling (script and
editing) is uneven, however, and often leaves the audience, at least this
audience, squirming with embarrassment.
Spielberg has never known when to end his films and has ruined many a
good one (The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List, for example) with too many endings, and Lincoln is no different. We do not need to be walked through the
assassination, his cabinet gathered round the crumpled body, or flashback to
his Second Inaugural. Lincoln
descending the White House stairs on his way to the theater, framed by the dark
arch of the portico, would have been enough. The rest, as they say, is history. (Steve bought me Sunrise
at Campobello on DVD for
Christmas. As Ralph Bellamy’s Roosevelt
begins his speech nominating Al Smith at the 1924 Democratic Convention, the
culmination of a three-year struggle to find a life after polio, the camera
pulls back amid confetti, balloons, and cheers. We know the rest of the story. Spielberg should have studied his prototypes better!)
Unfortunately for this film, not
only the end but the beginning is mishandled with two soldiers, one black, one
white, telling Lincoln of their exploits on the battlefield and reciting the
Gettysburg Address for him. It
doesn’t get more embarrassingly didactic than that. I once published an article on “Old Age Cinema,” in which I
discussed the characteristics that I thought films created by directors in
their later years had in common.
As Lincoln started out, I
wondered if Spielberg was falling into that category, and not in a good way,
but the core of the film, the fight for the 13th Amendment, was as
tight, lively, and irreverent as anything Spielberg or anyone else, for that
matter, has made. That and
the acting are worth the price of admission.
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