Welcome to Rearview Mirror, a monthly column in which I re-view and then re-review a movie I have already seen under the new (and improved?) critical lens of 2022. I’m so happy you’re here.
Last year I explained in my review of War Horse that my family, for many years, saw The Annual Spielberg around Christmastime. Lincoln was one of those. But unlike War Horse, Lincoln is good. And—huge, annoyed sigh—very relevant.
The movie came out weeks after Barack Obama won a second term, and for me—and I assume others in my liberal bubble—it was a reassuring reminder of how far we’ve come. When George Yeaman (Michael Stuhlbarg) winkingly frets that freed slaves could someday get the vote, the audience knows that not only will this happen, but that a Black man (though not descended from slaves) would someday occupy Lincoln’s office. A running theme through the movie, that Lincoln has Black friends, to put it colloquially, is self-congratulatory but not grating. Oh, those halcyon days.
In fact, Honest Abe was having a bit of a moment in 2012. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the nation was gripped with Lincoln Fever the way we’d all come down with Hamilton Mania a few years later, but the movie inspired an SNL sketch and was not the only Lincoln movie to hit theaters that year. There was also the one about hunting vampires. Vampires, of course, were having their own moment at the time, so I guess I can see the reasoning, although the title itself (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, in case, reasonably, you forgot) seems, in retrospect, perhaps disrespectful? I haven’t seen it.
The cast is an absolute feast. Elder statesmen Tommy Lee Jones and Daniel Day-Lewis anchor a sprawling ensemble filled out by reliable mid-tier character guys who finally get to shine when given a great script: Tim Blake Nelson, John Hawkes, James Spader, David Strathairn, Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel, Julie White, S. Epatha Merkerson. There are a number of bit parts played by men just a couple years away from their breakout moments, like Stuhlbarg, Lee Pace, and Walton Goggins. The most obvious is Adam Driver as a telegraph operator; the most subtle, Jeremy Strong in a nearly mute performance as Lincoln’s private secretary. Jared Harris and Hal Holbrook are just happy to be there.
The weak spot, sadly, is Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Lincoln’s son Robert, though I understand the casting choice. He’s the apple of his parents’ eyes; of course he’s the best-looking person for miles around. And there was a second when he was sure to be Hollywood’s Next Big Thing. But pairing him with Day-Lewis only showed his limitations. Yelling isn’t acting, my boy. (I’ll also shout out Dane DeHaan, who pops up in the opening. He was about to be a Next Big Thing, too, but it’s David Oyelowo who took that scene and ran with it. Poor Dane DeHaan. Jesse Plemons should buy you lunch sometime.
The only thing harder than playing Abraham Lincoln is playing the woman who could equal him, challenge him, counterbalance him, and Sally Field pulls it off.
But DD-L isn’t the MVP. Sally Field as Mary Todd “Molly” Lincoln is fucking phenomenal. Anne Hathaway can do no wrong in my book, but I’d like to go on record as saying that Oscar shoulda been Sally’s. You have never seen such anguish. You have never heard a voice in so much pain. The only thing harder than playing Abraham Lincoln is playing the woman who could equal him, challenge him, counterbalance him, and she pulls it off.
The movie is based partly on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, a book that definitely had a moment. I remember when it’s all anyone’s parents could talk about. Having the tome on your bookshelf was an intellectual status symbol. Maybe that’s one reason I liked the movie so much: it was an adult look at history, and demanded an adult attention span. Just like the book, the movie is long, clocking in at two and a half hours. It became a short-lived joke: “the full Lincoln.”
But the story is simple. Scripted by Spielberg’s Munich collaborator Tony Kushner, it traces—like a long West Wing episode—Lincoln’s quest to get the 13th Amendment passed during a lame duck session of Congress. His team bribes and wheedles and eventually convinces enough representatives to flip, as you probably guessed. Taking as a given that slavery is evil, a view the real Lincoln perhaps didn’t hold for his entire life but firmly believes by the start of this story, there’s no inner conflict to be mined there. Instead, he’s torn between potentially ending slavery and potentially ending the Civil War. It’s both a political question and a horrific calculus of human suffering. Freedom means turmoil, and if it comes at the cost of bloodshed, will the nation even want it? But we’re reminded that Black people have skin in the game on both ends: the opening scene finds Lincoln talking to Black soldiers and includes, recited by others, the majority of the Gettysburg Address.
Meanwhile, family drama. Mary Todd frets about her contributions, justifying her expenditures to fix up the White House while still mourning the death of her young son, and the Lincolns’ eldest demands to join the war effort. A trio of fixers provide comic relief, and captions, used sparingly, notify us of important locations and dates. There’s no cloying voiceover or framing device, though Mr. 16th often lapses into anecdote. It ends where you think it does, though there’s a fake-out about the theaters. I’d say it earns its runtime and then some. In fact, it couldn’t and shouldn’t have been a minute shorter.
Each scene has a clear lesson, either an argument debated or a principle illustrated. In a 90-minute movie, this would feel simplistic and even preachy. But given the sheer volume of text, the number of characters, and the variety of perspectives, the whole is greater than the sum of its myriad parts. Scenes don’t set up only to pay off later; they layer on top of one another, painting, brush stroke by brush stroke, a portrait of a man, a time, a turning point. Spielberg is attempting to grapple, and succeeds as much as anyone has, with a complicated figure full of contradictions. A simple law man “clothed in immense power!” What the viewer takes away from it is up to them, but he and Kushner have provided enough material to reasonably take the measure of the man. He was, after all, so very tall.
I’d say it earns its runtime and then some. In fact, it couldn’t and shouldn’t have been a minute shorter.
It’s temptingly easy to slot today’s topics into the place of abolition. It seemed “radical” at the time but is now accepted—will defunding the police look that way in a hundred years? The Emancipation Proclamation was executive overreach…but it was good! Surely eliminating student loan debt is the same? The country hasn’t descended into a Civil War, officially, but we do seem to be torn in half, and lives have been lost in the battle over who really won the last election.
The problem with a one-to-one reading is that the movie offers no answers except to show how hard it can be to do the right thing, how much it aged Lincoln to chart a course through those choppy waters (the boat metaphor dream in the beginning is the weakest scene; we get it!). And alas, we have no such captain today. Neither Obama nor Biden, I’m sorry to say, inspires in me the love and reverence felt by Abe’s supporters. But we can find inspiration at the movies. Which is all to say…The Fabelmans comes out in two days. FL
