NOTE: This is the first of a two-part essay. The second part, dealing
with issues of fact and depiction of history, will appear here soon.
When I saw the trailer
for
Lincoln, my immediate thought was that I was watching the
animatronic President Lincoln I saw at Disneyland in Anaheim, and
since Steven Spielberg is, as I have pointed out before, very much in
the mold of the 1950s Disney movies he grew up watching, I was
expecting a worthy, if not wooden, film, portraying a worthy if not
wooden President. The fact is, although
Lincoln is indeed worthy, it
is very much not wooden. It does begin, however, as if determined to
present that animatronic Lincoln, a robotic figure who sits and
listens to a lecture from a black soldier, whose argument about
equality is virtually the only time in the film a speech makes no
effort to sound like the 19
th century. It thought of a
similar argument over soldiers' pay in
Glory, which made less effort
to sound period, but managed to convey the point in more period
fashion. Then two boys from Gettysburg start reciting the Address,
which is finished by the black soldier. Although it's moving, it does
not ring true, indeed it smacks of what I'd call
'anachro-correctness', the desire to give characters in the past the
attitudes of the present.
With Spielberg, this instinct has
manifested itself in hammer-heavy codas to films like
Saving Private
Ryan, trying to drive the point home to the contemporary audience.
Fortunately for the film, and the audience, this approach ceases with
that scene, and there is no coda. The other important thing in this
scene, however, is the way the two Gettysburg boys are presented as
just that, boys. They are kids with their idol, and as such they are
stand-ins for us, in the Speilberg universe.
Within the framework of
that universe, however, Lincoln makes a strong effort at presenting a
nuanced political argument about Lincoln's battle to pass the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery. Although
it's passed the Senate, it has failed once already in the House of
Representatives, where he has only a small majority, and
Constitutional Amendments require a two-thirds vote. Besides trying
to end a war and put the nation back together, Lincoln is also trying
to keep his family together; his wife Mary still mourns the loss of
their middle son; she ignores the youngest, and dotes on their
oldest, who now wants to quit Harvard and join the Army. Keeping families together has always been a centerpiece of Spielberg's films.
The intimate story
parallels the first, with Lincoln in a dilemma of principle regarding
the war, and another about how to raise his eldest son. The film does
well dealing with the nuances of Lincoln's bigger battles: he does
not want to wait for the bigger majority he would have when the new
House, swept in with his re-election in 1864, comes to Washington. He
worries that moves to peace would lessen the cause of anti-slavery,
concessions could be made to the South to end the war and even reform
the Union, and he knows a bill passed by this more balanced House
would carry more weight with the public, as well as sending a message
to the South about the impossibility of a negotiated settlement as
opposed to a surrender. But Lincoln needs to placate both wings of
his own Republican party, the radical abolitionists and those,
particularly from Border states, looking for peace. Meanwhile, he
needs Democratic votes as well. And he knows he has not won the
hearts and minds of the voters on the issue of racial equality.
I found this part of
the story engrossing, perhaps because I know the background; it was
accused by many of being 'boring' and slowing down the film.
But if
it isn't totally successful, it's more because it can't decide
whether it's trying to be
The West Wing or
Advise And Consent, and so
winds up being neither. But what it actually does is use the space between those modes, and use its parallel stories, to tell the story of Lincoln's whole career through the microcosm of this one political battle. Thus it can't be
West Wing because there is no
back-chat to speak of; there is only one story, Lincoln's, and the
literal pursuit of wavering votes, by bribery or whatever means, is
played more for comedy than anything else. Tommy Lee Jones, as the
abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, who was the most powerful man in the
House, is less a foil for Lincoln than a counter-balance; a
true-believer who needs to learn Lincoln's style of accommodation.
The actual political in-fighting is portrayed more through the chaos
of the House chamber, and that much is done well, but the real meat
of the story is when it comes down to Lincoln with his adversaries,
where his full arsenal of persuasion and intimidation is brought into
play. In fact the most powerful moment in the film may be when
Lincoln slams his fists on a table and elucidates his power. But this
placing of Lincoln in the centre of everything (except Stevens' own
dilemma) means that, apart from highlights of debates, the real
political infighting must be in the background.
At home, we often see
Lincoln in shadows, as a silhouette, a gossamer figure behind
curtains. The most truly Spielberg moment comes when Lincoln finds
his youngest son Tad asleep in front of the fire, tin soldiers spread
across a War Department map. It's shot from the child's eye, gazing
way up at Lincoln, before Lincoln drops down to Tad's level on the
floor.
It again places the audience into the position of the child.
This is the constant strain in Spielberg's work, between the
childlike audience point of view, and the serious, usually masculine
work at hand in the films. It's why the soldiers together on the
march bits of Private Ryan didn't work at all; it's hard for him to
do male bonding on an equal basis, whereas he can show the excitement
and indeed horror of battle deftly. And that's why Lincoln's
political machinations don't measure up to, for example,
Advise and
Consent, because we're not watching equals at play.
I've written before
that the film-maker Spielberg most resembles is Robert Stevenson,
best-remembered today for
Jane Eyre and a series of Disney comedies
in the Sixties, but who hit his Disney peak with
Old Yeller and
Johnny Tremaine in 1957 (for purposes of this film it might be
interesting to revisit Stevenson's Thirties version of
King Solomon's
Mines, with Paul Robeson in a key role excised from later versions).
Disney's 50s, with films like the above and TV series like
Davy
Crockett or
Swamp Fox, were all about 'printing the legend' and
telling history as adventure, from a child's point of view, but with
an adult story line. It's also crucial that
Lincoln's most direct approach to the issue of slavery itself comes with Tad looking at photographs of slaves, which leads him to ask the black people he knows about it, and thus give the audience reassurance that slavery was indeed wrong, and horrible.This elementary 'Disney' approach means Spielberg can play on Lincoln's
legend while deconstructing, as it were, the man himself. With
Lincoln, I think Spielberg is appropriating John Ford, and not just
because Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is far closer to Henry Fonda's
in Ford's
Young Mr. Lincoln than, say, to Raymond Massey's (who also
played John Brown—an interesting daily double of lead roles). And
it's the performance by Lewis that defines the film, and it is a
remarkable one.
Lewis inhabits the
character physically, his gait and posture telling us all we need to know about the strain he is under. Although his voice at times seems to hint
at Walter Brennan in the Thirties, it strikes the key of authenticity
not only in time but in terms of the man himself. It lacks bombast,
but is full of conviction, it is the voice of persuasion, of
self-deprecation; this is the Lincoln as he was portrayed in Doris
Kearns Goodwin's
Team Of Rivals (of which more in part II) who so
inspired Barack Obama. And it can never resist humour, especially when used tactically.
Few of the rest of the cast are given huge
moments, apart from Jones and Sally Field as Mrs Lincoln. Field's too
old, just as Lewis is too young, for their roles, and it creates some
awkward moments; you get the sense that Fields imbues the
character with a bit too much of her own patented hysteria, but she
is strikingly effective. David Strathairn seems also to inhabit
Secretary of State Seward, relegated to a literally supporting role.
There are excellent cameos by Waylon Goggins, as a bribed Democrat,
and Jackie Earle Haley as Confederate Vice President Stephens, but in
general the cast puts on their whiskers or ties up their bustles and
is convincing.
Jones' role is the most
problematic. It is significant that he is presented in two 'reveals',
introduced by the device of seeing the Congressmen reporting to him,
and then, at the end, having his 'housekeeper' revealed to be in bed
with him, as a spouse.
He gets the biggest decision moment, when he
has to speak about equality, and his equivocation is a thing of
brilliance—the one moment when the film achieves its synthesis of
West Wing and
Advise and Consent. Beyond that, however, his iron
control over his half of the House is expressed mostly in elaborate
putdowns. The House vote itself is presented with score-keeping as
clunky as anything I've seen since the makers of
Red Dragon decided
Hannibal Lecter would need to translate 'ris de veau' in his
cookbook for the benefit of the audience, and the misrepresentation in the opening of the roll call is
something I will discuss in part II of this essay.
I mentioned at the
start that I feared an animatronic Lincoln, and I feared a Spielberg
coda that would drive home his point. As the movie reaches the end,
we come close. Lee's surrender at Appomattox presents us with our
second animatronic moment: when Jarred Harris' rather too clean Grant
doffs his hat, and Lee creakingly replies in kind. But it passes
quickly. We see Robert Lincoln in uniform as part of Grant's staff—he
looks remarkably like his little brother's soldier suit, and I
wondered if, in the middle of the horror, Spielberg was still making
a point, as with Tad and his war games in front of the fire, about
war being a child's thing. And then, when Lincoln is shot, Spielberg
chooses to give us the news while Tad is at another theatre. This is
true, but I'm sure part of the reason was to wrong-foot the audience,
who were probably expecting John Wilkes Booth and 'sic semper
tyrannus'.
But to me it was
crucial the play Tad Lincoln saw that night was Aladdin...and
Spielberg ends us with a child's moment, a fairy story, interrupted
by a nightmare of losing a parent. It is a purely Spielberg
reaction—and, in a movie that doesn't really 'print the legend',
brings it back to that 1950s moment. As an historical epic I like it
better than Private Ryan or Schindler's List. This year's Oscar
nominees were better, as a group, than last year's, but I still
struggle to find one that jumps out as 'best' or 'great'. It may be simply the academy is tired of the elegaic, the John
Williams' score's borrowing from Copland and Ken Burns's documentary. It might be that Lincoln didn't win best film because it was up
against films approaching, to some extent, our present condition—and
although I kept seeing hints of the Tea Party, and hints about our
continuing racial divide, I think it lived up to its forecast of
worthiness, and kept away from controversy. Which might have made it
more relevant, but would have made it less Spielberg.
My obituary of the actress Mary Tyler Moore went online at the Guardian last night; I had written it a few months ago. You can link to it here. It is as I wrote it, and I hope it conveys my fascination with the parallels between her life and her on screen roles. Even the way she entered the business, first as a dancer and then as a pair of legs at an answering service switchboard, seemed to suggest her difficulties in overcoming the insecurities of projecting characters who are somehow not supposed to be yourself, but reflect your own perception of self even as you bring them to life. This seemed to be her battle throughout her career, and much of her career seemed to go out of its way to make the similarities obvious.
I
didn't write about how big an influence she was in the Dick Van Dyke Show. Kids my age had crushes on her, moving beyond the women we wish
were our moms, like Donna Reed or Loretta Young, to her being the
epitome of allure in that early 60s Jackie Kennedy way. There is
something to be written about the relative
nerdiness/powerlessness of the men in those early 60s sitcoms; where the
50s husband/fathers were relative inert, but strong presences, Rob
Petrie and his equivalents (think Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, Green
Acres) were males whose inert Father Knows Best presence was crossed
with the bit of Ricky Ricardo when faced with the anarchic chaos of
Lucy. This was something Mad Men captured pretty well, along with the
other side of the coin, which was the men you'd find in a John D MacDonald
novel.
Just as importantly, she was someone the female audience identified with. Originally, she was a hoofer learning comedy; Dick Van Dyke was glowing this morning on the radio explaining what a quick study she was as a comedienne, but it was always fun to watch them dance together, or do slapstick with an easy fitting brilliance. But as Mary Richards she was just the kind of hesitant, insecure, struggling woman to whom the middle-American audience could relate. She was the Catholic school girl in the midst of New York Jewish comedy (even when set in Minneapolis) and she played brilliantly off Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, Gavin MacLeod and the rest, and was especially good cutting the even-more-brittle fragile-ego'd Ted Baxter down to size. 
it was exactly the role she had played with such emotional impact in Ordinary People eight years earlier. It's also interesting to see the close parallel with Sally Field's interpretation in Spielberg's Lincoln, Field being another who often seems to be playing herself (think back to her needy Oscar speech). 
