353) Lincoln (2012) Dir: Steven Spielberg Date Released: November 9, 2012 Date Seen: November 9, 2012 Rating: 4/5
361) The Golden Child (1986) Dir: Michael Ritchie Date Released: December 12, 1986 Date Seen: November 11, 2012 Rating: 1.5/5
363) Skyfall (2012) Dir: Sam Mendes Date Released: November 9, 2012 Date Seen: November 14, 2012 Rating: 3.25/5
Lincoln: I'm not fond of one or two would-be iconic scenes in this film, particularly the opening, the ending, and the battlefield survey. I'm also not nuts about Sally Field's Missus Lincoln subplot (gratingly shrill, though that's her role). But otherwise, I was drawn to Lincoln because it's a superior legislative drama, and I love legislative dramas (Advise and Consent!). Part of this is a matter of direction, scripting, and virtuosic acting, especially Tommy Lee Jones and Daniel Day-Lewis. But I'm also struck by screenwriter Tony Kushner's idol worship. To Kushner, the film's subjects were flawed men that, to some extent, knew they were carrying the burden of change.They knew that they needed to resort to rigorous politicking if they wanted to make a difference. I like to imagine Kushner's own activism influenced the way he shows characters like Jones's Thaddeus Stevens or Fields's Mary Todd Lincoln heroically making ethical compromises for their own personal reasons. If activism is going to work, everyone has got to find their reasons, and they do, in the end.
Kushner was smart to narrow the scope of his drama so that it mainly concerns the steps needed to pass the 13th amendment and the people that took those steps. This means Lincoln is almost exclusively about white people, which is theoretically distressing, but works practically sincethese men consider slavery in a conceptual light. Sure, they all have slaves, and in Stevens's exceptional case, slaves are more than just property. But the consequences of the legislators' actions are abstracted to the point where it's all about bodies on a battlefield, visitors in a gallery, and votes that need buying. I'm most comfortable with Kushner's approach when Lincoln is all about buying allegiances because that's when the film's drama is most dynamic. But I'll probably rewatch this in a year or three and not have any reservations.
