I thought the film was successfully monumental in all sorts of ways. I felt Spielberg only stepped in Spielberg-ism a couple of times - e.g. the opening scene of battle carnage echoed Saving Private Ryan.
DDL was genius, as usual. One of his scenes took me out of the performance, however. I can’t really know if it was his choice or Spielberg’s but it came off to me as an actor’s tic - he does this thing where he sit’s with a shawl over his shoulders and let’s his head tilt and delivers his lines with a kinda hangdog sadness. We saw the same thing on display in Gangs of New York so it seems like it’s his “thing”.
Democracy can be messy.
Politicians can be devious.
War is hell.
Even heroes have failings.
Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t the one-dimensional bitch-on-wheels that too many people think she was.
People of talent, good will and determination can work together to accomplish even the “impossible.”
I actually thought the opening scene was the worst part of the whole movie. Having Lincoln sit there while three soldiers recite bits of the Gettysburg Address at him is just silly. It was almost as if the screenwriter was thinking, Y’know, the Gettysburg Address is a great speech, but if the movie starts in early 1865, how can I include it? Ooo, I know…!
Didn’t bother me or strike me as particularly “unnatural”. Lots of famous TV & movie actors complain about people meeting them and feeling obliged to recite one or two of their most famous lines, until they become heartily sick of the thousandth person doing it. The movie scene struck me as no more than the 19th Century equivalent of someone saying “I’ll be bach!” when they meet Arnold Schwartzenegger. Also, one solider having started to recite the Address off the top of his head, another felt obliged to show off by finishing it. The two young white soldiers practically tripped over each other in this effort.
Okay, that scene was a little ham-handed, but it did help establish Lincoln as being both an ordinary person who could relate to other ordinary persons, on any level, while being capable of expressing the noblest and most glorious thoughts in the most inspirational language. Dramatic foreshadowing, don’tcha know.
I just returned. It seemed almost like alternate scenes were written by different people. Lincoln’s brooding, his stories, the scenes in the telegraphy room, lots of the quiet moments I though were good history and excellent cinema. But the opening scene of Lincoln having no one to talk with except some overly earnest black soldiers, the House debate free-for-alls, a House gallery and Second Inaugural full of black faces, Stevens (with Jones’ Texas accent, no less) in bed with his black housekeeper, Tad in the theater, and a couple of other scenes made me cringe at the necessity of making it a Hollywood movie.
What part did Kevin Kline play in the movie? He’s listed in the credits as “wounded soldier” or some such but I didn’t see him and have no idea why he’d play such a small role.
Maybe he had an ancestor in the war and felt a connection. Two of my great-great grandfathers fought for the Union, and on was incarcerated at Andersonville prison. Maybe if I was male and had a chance for a bit role in such a movie, I’d take it.
I looked very closely at the scene where the President greets the wounded soldiers in the hospital while Robert waits outside in the carriage. I didn’t spot Kevin Kline in it.
I thought the good guys were way too good and the bad guys too bad. I’m surprised they didn’t have Lincoln literally being carried to heaven by angels. The acting was tremendous, but I felt the movie was overly dramatic and too long.
I can sort of understand this, but then again the “bad guys” were either trying to keep slavery legal or fighting a war of rebellion. So, in truth, they were pretty bad.
Did you have the same complaint about, say, Schindler’s List?
On the “good guys too good” front, the film was pretty explicit that Lincoln at least authorized moderate corruption in procuring the necessary votes for the 13th and that he was well aware that many of his war powers resolutions were Constitutionally dubious (including emancipation).
And having both sides adamantly opposed to women’s suffrage I thought was a nice reminder that even "enlightened"minds of the 1860’s were not particularly modern in their thinking.
Yeah, it was pretty funny when the Congressional liberals (by 1865 standards) jumped to their feet in outrage when they were accused of being in favor of giving women the right to vote.
Well, the Stevens in bed with his black housekeeper was historical.
According to Goodwin’s book, there *were *a lot of blacks people attending Lincoln’s second inaugural (perhaps not in the good seats, I’ll admit).
Tad Lincoln was attending Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp the night his father was assassinated.
I don’t know if congresspeople interrupted each other, as in the movie, but the House wasn’t terribly genteel at times.
The House gallery, I don’t know. The house erupted in cheers when the 13th amendment passed. I don’t know if black people were in the gallery. Mary Todd Lincoln was not.
Well, that’s Spielberg for you. He’s a highly skilled and creative filmmaker, but he has a weakness for sentimentality, and a tendency to bludgeon viewers over the head when he’s got some moral point to make. To be fair, those “flaws” are also responsible for his movies being so popular. People like sentimentality and they like having points clearly explained.
Also, from what I’ve read, the house debates of that era actually were like that, with pseudo Shakespearean posturing, loud declamations, and general chaos. Hell, if someone from another time and place came across some C-span footage, I’m not sure if they’d believe that’s how people spoke.
Very enjoyable movie. I’ll be astonished if it doesn’t get the Oscar. It was a really smart choice to pare the story down to the end of Lincoln’s life. There is no way you could have fit his whole life into a 2.5 hour movie.
The main message, I think, was that you can do good through the democratic political process, but you have to accept that it is clumsy, corrupt and requires soul rending acts of moral compromise and hard choices.
Saw it over our Thanksgiving holiday, and thought it was overall very good.
As others have said, it’s amazing how DDL communicates Lincoln, especially since Lincoln has become a caricature of himself just about, what with the hat and the beard and being really tall and gaunt. DDL manages to portray an odd-looking and oddly-mannered guy who still comes across like a real person.
My biggest complaints are the the things that are too Spielberg, such as the shot of the black servant looking poignantly at Lincoln as he strides away … as if, perhaps, he is never coming back. Cue dramatic music. Also agree with the hamhandedness of Tommy Lee getting into bed with his black housekeeper. There are ways you can communicate the historical fact of the relationship without the (melo)dramatic reveal of the pan to include her on her side of the bed.
I wish Spielberg hadn’t included the assassination. I think it would have been a better ending if it was left with Lincoln and MTL talking about their plans for after the war. That’s sad right there, because you know he gets assassinated in the near future. And I suppose one could argue that there are people out there who DON’T KNOW … but I don’t think they should be dragging the whole movie down to the lowest common denominator.
I do not know very much about this, and I’m sure others are more expert in this area, but I was wondering how the film would handle Lincoln’s views on black people, and his vague ideas of establishing a former slave colony … and the movie didn’t include this at all. There is one scene where he is speaking with his wife’s maid, and in response to her question about what he thinks about American blacks, his answer is vaguely folksy and ultimately non-committal. Actually, I think the answer is more along the lines of what we in modern America would have wanted his answer to be.
But overall, I enjoyed it. I agree that it has a strong chance of doing extremely well at the Academy Awards, but I say that with the understanding that it’s an easy choice. I don’t think it’s a ground-breaking film in any sense other than DDL’s performance.
How was this scene melodramatic? It was a quiet domestic scene based in accepted historical fact. I thought it touched on the not always acknowledged idea that mixed race relationships in those days weren’t always based on forcible rape.
Or possibly for most Americans, who know the ending, and would have felt that the movie was incomplete without it. I know that while I was dreading the assassination, I would have felt let down if it wasn’t included at all. It would have ended the movie on a massive cliffhanger, which only works if there is going to be a sequel.
I saw Lincoln Sunday night. The last movie I saw in theaters before that was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
DDL was so good. I think TLJ might win an Oscar too. Lee Pace as one of the main Democratic opponents was good and deserves mention. In fact, the acting overall was very top notch.
Lincoln had toyed with “colonization” (resettling American blacks back in Africa) earlier in his career, but by 1862-65 had, by all accounts, come to accept that they did not want to go and would be staying here. Frederick Douglass, among others, thought Lincoln grew enormously in racial sensitivity by the time of his death, and said Lincoln always treated him as an equal.
The President’s answer to Mrs. Keckley was somewhat noncommittal, I agree, but if it had been a typical modern (liberal) American response, Spielberg and Kushner could easily have had him say something like, “All of your people, Mrs. Keckley, are Americans just as much as I am. You are valued, you have helped us win the war, and you have much to contribute to our society in the vast and bright future which lies before us…” etc. etc. etc.
His more ambiguous response was probably closer to Lincoln’s own thinking at the time. He knew there were titanic fights ahead over black suffrage, Reconstruction, desegregation, rights to serve on juries, rights to intermarriage, education of the then-largely-uneducated freed slaves, their absorption into the paid labor market, etc. It would’ve given pause to any leader with foresight, an open mind and a good heart in early 1865.
See David Herbert Donald’s excellent Lincoln for more on this.
Also, one solider having started to recite the Address off the top of his head, another felt obliged to show off by finishing it. The two young white soldiers practically tripped over each other in this effort. 
