Lincoln Movie

We’ve recently seen the movie, Lincoln, and enjoyed it very much.    Kay has read the Lincoln biography, Team of Rivals, and I have read the first one third of the book, twice.  The movie may have been partly inspired by the book, although the script chose to focus almost exclusively on one month in Lincoln’s life, January 1865.  This is far from an action film, and would probably bore many people.

We found the layering of familiar themes with less well known ones to be appealing.  The brooding and focused Lincoln, who occasionally turns to story-telling and his sometimes manic wife, are juxtaposed with the slimy political dealing to secure votes and secret meetings with Confederate envoys.

Daniel Day Lewis portrays a Lincoln that is eminently believable and very sympathetic.  Sally Fields does a fine job as Mary Todd Lincoln.  Two old war horses, Tommy Lee Jones and Hal Holbrook turn in very fine performances as members of the House of Representatives, especially Jones, who uses his lunar landscape of a face to great effect as Thaddeus Stephens

The movie might better have ended with the passage of the critical bill, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but it goes on to include the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination.  All said though, the last 10% of the film is a small price to pay for getting the first 90%.