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lincoln movie review essay

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I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. He had less than a year of formal education and taught himself through his hungry reading of great books. I still recall from a childhood book the image of him taking a piece of charcoal and working out mathematics by writing on the back of a shovel.

Lincoln lacked social polish but he had great intelligence and knowledge of human nature. The hallmark of the man, performed so powerfully by Daniel Day-Lewis in "Lincoln," is calm self-confidence, patience and a willingness to play politics in a realistic way. The film focuses on the final months of Lincoln's life, including the passage of the 13th Amendment ending slavery, the surrender of the Confederacy and his assassination. Rarely has a film attended more carefully to the details of politics.

Lincoln believed slavery was immoral, but he also considered the 13th Amendment a masterstroke in cutting away the financial foundations of the Confederacy. In the film, the passage of the amendment is guided by William Seward ( David Strathairn ), his secretary of state, and by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens ( Tommy Lee Jones ), the most powerful abolitionist in the House. Neither these nor any other performances in the film depend on self-conscious histrionics; Jones in particular portrays a crafty codger with some secret hiding places in his heart.

The capital city of Washington is portrayed here as roughshod gathering of politicians on the make. The images by Janusz Kaminski , Spielberg's frequent cinematographer, use earth tones and muted indoor lighting. The White House is less a temple of state than a gathering place for wheelers and dealers. This ambience reflects the descriptions in Gore Vidal's historical novel "Lincoln," although the political and personal details in Tony Kushner's concise, revealing dialogue is based on "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book is well-titled. This is a film not about an icon of history, but about a president who was scorned by some of his political opponents as just a hayseed from the backwoods.

Lincoln is not above political vote buying. He offers jobs, promotions, titles and pork barrel spending. He isn't even slightly reluctant to employ the low-handed tactics of his chief negotiators (Tim Blake Nelson , James Spader , John Hawkes ). That's how the game is played, and indeed we may be reminded of the arm-bending used to pass the civil rights legislation by Lyndon B. Johnson, the subject of another biography by Goodwin.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who has a lock on an Oscar nomination, modulates Lincoln. He is soft-spoken, a little hunched, exhausted after the years of war, concerned that no more troops die. He communicates through stories and parables. At his side is his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln ( Sally Field , typically sturdy and spunky), who is sometimes seen as a social climber but here is focused as wife and mother. She has already lost one son in the war and fears to lose the other. This boy, Robert Todd Lincoln ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ), refuses the privileges of family.

There are some battlefields in "Lincoln" but the only battle scene is at the opening, when the words of the Gettysburg Address are spoken with the greatest possible impact, and not by Lincoln. Kushner also smoothly weaves the wording of the 13th Amendment into the film without making it sound like an obligatory history lesson.

The film ends soon after Lincoln's assassination. I suppose audiences will expect that to be included. There is an earlier shot, when it could have ended, of President Lincoln walking away from the camera after his amendment has been passed. The rest belongs to history.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

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Lincoln (2012)

Rated PG-13 for an intense scene of war violence, some images of carnage and brief strong language

149 minutes

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln

Tommy Lee Jones as Stevens

Sally Field as Mary Todd

David Strathairn as Seward

Directed by

  • Steven Spielberg
  • Tony Kushner

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Lincoln – review

S teven Spielberg has made more obviously entertaining and more emotionally seductive movies than Lincoln , but this is for him the most brave and, for the audience, most demanding picture in the 40 years since his emergence as a major director. It's a film about statesmanship, politics, the creation of the world's greatest democracy, and it's concerned with what we can learn from the study and contemplation of history. Spielberg and his eloquent screenwriter, the playwright Tony Kushner, handle these themes with flair, imagination and vitality, and Daniel Day-Lewis embodies them with an indelible intelligence as the 16th president of the United States

Lincoln begins a year before the end of the civil war with the movie's only battle scene. It's a minute of the bloody, hand-to-hand combat at Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas, that by a brilliant piece of editing legerdemain is transformed into two black soldiers recalling the battle while talking to Lincoln about the future of the Union. The scene establishes the rock-like physical presence of the war-weary president, his warmth, modesty and humanity. The picture concludes a year later with a non-triumphalist coda that follows five days after Confederate general Robert E Lee's surrender.

With immense adroitness Spielberg avoids the high drama of the actual assassination at Ford's theatre on 14 April 1865, showing us the news being broken to Lincoln's young son, Tad, at another theatre and then bringing us to Lincoln's deathbed where secretary of war Edwin Stanton pronounces the celebrated epitaph: "Now he belongs to the ages" (though he might actually have said "to the angels"). This is followed by a brief concluding flashback to Lincoln's second inaugural address a month earlier, with its cautious message of hope and realism.

The heart of the film is a few weeks in January 1865 in an overcast wintry Washington between Lincoln's second election and his inauguration. In this brief moment of opportunity he's faced with a crucial decision. Should he end this bloody war, one of the most costly, bitter and divisive in modern history, by a compromising peace with the Confederate enemy? Or should he make a final attempt to persuade the House of Representatives to reverse an earlier decision and enact the 13th Amendment to the constitution? This would declare that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction".

This incendiary issue – involving the abolition of slavery and all this might entail for equality in all its forms – is at the centre of this drama. Lincoln must handle it on a variety of fronts: the military, the electorate, a Congress divided on this issue, and his own family. As Doris Kearns Goodwin shows in her book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln , the key source of the film's screenplay, he had astutely brought together gifted people who'd been his opponents in order both to wage war and to advance his social, moral and political policies. And the film is about the way this principled statesman and wily politician was ready to bend rules, reinterpret the law and manipulate people, but always with the object of serving democracy and securing America's moral leadership on the world stage.

Lincoln is playing a deadly game, juggling a variety of balls. Simultaneously he must hold his cabinet together with the particular help of his closest, most honest confidant, secretary of state Seward (David Strathairn), to gather the votes necessary to secure the vote he needs in Congress and keep secret the presence of a top peace-seeking delegation from the south. Beyond this he must reassure his generals that the war will be prosecuted with full intensity, and he must deal with his family. His eldest son Robert wants to leave university and serve in the army, while his wife, the troubled and devoted Mary (Sally Field), cannot bear to lose another son after the death of her beloved William, who died three years earlier.

There is, too, another strand, almost a film in itself and a source of both fun and realism, in the presence of three political fixers, Washington lobbyists before the term was coined. Colourfully played by James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson, they're cynical idealists, getting people to change their minds by bribery, blackmail and coercion. They're part of a gallery of more than 100 speaking roles, all significant in their way, and they impose themselves on us in a brisk, lucid story that's superbly edited, designed and photographed. John Williams's score, however, is somewhat overemphatic.

At the centre of this bustling social panorama is Lincoln: explaining himself through endless anecdotes and folksy memories; quoting Shakespeare, the Bible and Euclid to make his ideas persuasive; exploiting his simple eloquence to get people to do what's right; knowing just when and where to press his advantage. He grows old before our eyes and we believe it when Grant tells him that he's aged a decade over the past year.

In a towering performance, Day-Lewis encompasses the great statesman who shaped history, the intimate man of the people and the mysterious, charismatic figure who so fascinated Picasso that he collected thousands of pictures of him and once held up a photograph of Lincoln, proclaiming: "There is the real American elegance!"

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A President Engaged in a Great Civil War

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lincoln movie review essay

By A.O. Scott

  • Nov. 8, 2012

It is something of a paradox that American movies — a great democratic art form, if ever there was one — have not done a very good job of representing American democracy. Make-believe movie presidents are usually square-jawed action heroes, stoical Solons or ineffectual eggheads, blander and more generically appealing than their complicated real-life counterparts, who tend to be treated deferentially or ignored entirely unless they are named Richard Nixon .

The legislative process — the linchpin of our system of checks and balances — is often treated with lofty contempt masquerading as populist indignation, an attitude typified by the aw-shucks antipolitics of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Hollywood dreams of consensus, of happy endings and box office unity, but democratic government can present an interminable tale of gridlock, compromise and division. The squalor and vigor, the glory and corruption of the Republic in action have all too rarely made it onto the big screen.

There are exceptions, of course, and one of them is Steven Spielberg’s splendid “Lincoln,” which is, strictly speaking, about a president trying to scare up votes to get a bill passed in Congress. It is of course about a lot more than that, but let’s stick to the basics for now. To say that this is among the finest films ever made about American politics may be to congratulate it for clearing a fairly low bar. Some of the movie’s virtues are, at first glance, modest ones, like those of its hero, who is pleased to present himself as a simple backwoods lawyer, even as his folksy mannerisms mask a formidable and cunning political mind.

After a brutal, kinetic beginning — a scene of muddy, hand-to-hand combat that evokes the opening of “Saving Private Ryan”— “Lincoln” settles down into what looks like the familiar pageantry and speechifying of costume drama. A flock of first-rate character actors parades by in the heavy woolen plumage of the past. The smaller, plainer America of the mid-19th century is evoked by the brownish chiaroscuro of Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography, by the mud, brick and wood of Rick Carter’s production design and by enough important facial hair to make the young beard farmers of 21st-century Brooklyn weep tears of envy.

The most famous and challenging beard of them all sits on the chin of Daniel Day-Lewis, who eases into a role of epic difficulty as if it were a coat he had been wearing for years. It is both a curiosity and a marvel of modern cinema that this son of an Anglo-Irish poet should have become our leading portrayer of archaic Americans. Hawkeye (in “Last of the Mohicans”), Bill the Butcher (“Gangs of New York”), Daniel Plainview (“There Will Be Blood”) — all are figures who live in the dim borderlands of memory and myth, but with his angular frame and craggy features, Mr. Day-Lewis turns them into flesh and blood.

Above all, he gives them voice. His Lincoln speaks in a reedy drawl that provides a notable counterpoint to the bombastic bellowing of some of his allies and adversaries. (John Williams’s score echoes this contrast by punctuating passages of orchestral grandeur with homey scraps of fiddle, banjo and parlor piano.)

The script, by Tony Kushner, is attentive to the idioms of the time without being too showy about it. Lincoln is eloquent in the manner of the self-taught provincial prodigy he was, his speech informed by voracious reading and also by the tall tales and dirty jokes he heard growing up in the frontier country of Kentucky and Illinois. He uses words like “shindee” and “flib-flub” and likes to regale (and exasperate) his cabinet with homespun parables, shaggy dog stories and bits of outhouse humor. His salty native wit is complemented by the clear and lofty lyricism that has come down to us in his great speeches.

The main business of “Lincoln” is framed by two of those, the Gettysburg Address — quoted back to the president by awed Union soldiers on a January night in 1865 — and his Second Inaugural Address, which he delivered a little more than a month before the end of the Civil War and his own assassination. These are big, famous words and momentous events, and the task Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Kushner have set themselves is to make this well-known story fresh and surprising. Mr. Day-Lewis, for his part, must convey both the human particularity and the greatness of a man who is among the most familiar and the most enigmatic of American leaders. We carry him around in our pockets every day, and yet we still argue and wonder about who he was.

In this telling, drawn from parts of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 best seller, “Team of Rivals,” Lincoln the man is, for all his playfulness, prone to melancholy and attracted to solitude. He has a tender rapport with his young son Tad (Gulliver McGrath), and a difficult relationship with the boy’s older brother, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is furious that his parents have forbidden him to fight for the Union cause.

Lincoln’s wife, Mary — he calls her Molly, and she is played with just the right tinge of hysteria by Sally Field — is still grieving the loss of another son, Willie, from illness during the first year of the war, and her emotional instability is a constant worry to her husband. These private troubles combine with the strains of a wartime presidency to produce a portrait that is intimate but also decorous, drawn with extraordinary sensitivity and insight and focused, above all, on Lincoln’s character as a politician.

This is, in other words, less a biopic than a political thriller, a civics lesson that is energetically staged and alive with moral energy. Lincoln, having just won re-election, faces a complex predicament. The war has turned in the Union’s favor, but the Capitol is in some turmoil. Lincoln must contend with a Democratic opposition that reviles him as a dictator (“Abraham Africanus,” they call him) and also with a deep, factional split within the Republican Party.

The radicals, led by Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), the sharp-tongued chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and an aging lion of the Abolitionist movement, demand a vote on a constitutional amendment ending slavery. The conservatives in the party, whose gray eminence is Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), are lukewarm at best, preferring to push for peace talks with the Confederacy that evade a decisive solution to the problem of slavery.

The legal and ideological questions surrounding what would become (spoiler alert for those who slept through high school history) the 13th Amendment to the Constitution are crisply and cogently illustrated. Once Lincoln has decided that ratification is both the right and necessary thing to do, he has to hold his party together and also pick up a handful of votes from lame-duck Democratic congressmen.

William Seward (David Strathairn), his secretary of state and wartime consigliere, engages three shady characters — high-spirited hucksters (played by Tim Blake Nelson, John Hawkes and James Spader) who could have stumbled out of the pages of Mark Twain — to lure a few susceptible candidates with promises of patronage jobs once they leave the Congress. With others, Stevens’s arm-twisting proves more effective. The better angels of our nature sometimes need earthly inducements to emerge.

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And the genius of “Lincoln,” finally, lies in its vision of politics as a noble, sometimes clumsy dialectic of the exalted and the mundane. Our habit of argument, someone said recently, is a mark of our liberty, and Mr. Kushner, whose love of passionate, exhaustive disputation is unmatched in the modern theater, fills nearly every scene with wonderful, maddening talk. Mr. Spielberg’s best art often emerges in passages of wordlessness, when the images speak for themselves, and the way he composes his pictures and cuts between them endow the speeches and debates with emotional force, and remind us of what is at stake.

The question facing Lincoln is stark: Should he abolish slavery, once and for all, even if it means prolonging the war? The full weight and scale of this dilemma are the central lesson “Lincoln” asks us to grasp. The film places slavery at the center of the story, emphatically countering the revisionist tendency to see some other, more abstract thing — states’ rights, Southern culture, industrial capitalism — as the real cause of the Civil War. Though most of the characters are white (two notable and vital exceptions are Stephen Henderson and Gloria Reuben, as the Lincolns’ household servants), this is finally a movie about how difficult and costly it has been for the United States to recognize the full and equal humanity of black people.

There is no end to this story, which may be why Mr. Spielberg’s much-noted fondness for multiple denouements is in evidence here. There are at least five moments at which the narrative and the themes seem to have arrived at a place of rest. (The most moving for me is a quiet scene when the 13th Amendment is read aloud. I won’t give away by whom.) But the movie keeps going, building a symphony of tragedy and hope that celebrates Lincoln’s great triumph while acknowledging the terror, disappointment and other complications to come.

Some of the ambition of “Lincoln” seems to be to answer the omissions and distortions of the cinematic past, represented by great films like D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the violent disenfranchisement of African-Americans as a heroic second founding, and “Gone With the Wind,” with its romantic view of the old South. To paraphrase what Woodrow Wilson said of Griffith, Mr. Spielberg writes history with lightning.

Go see this movie. Take your children, even though they may occasionally be confused or fidgety. Boredom and confusion are also part of democracy, after all. “Lincoln” is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece — an omen, perhaps, that movies for the people shall not perish from the earth.

“ Lincoln” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violence and strong language.

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How historically accurate is "lincoln".

lincoln movie review essay

Moviegoers flocked to the theaters to see Lincoln over Thanksgiving weekend, and the history buffs among them probably wondered, with some anxiety, how much of it would be fact and how much of it would be fiction. The quality of the production, on top of some truly remarkable performances by Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones and others, certainly lent it a grounded feel. But how accurate is it?

There is a short answer and a long answer to this question. The short answer is: very. The long answer requires a bit more digging.

Lincoln is set during a short period of a few months in early 1865, and its overall plot is entirely factual. As the movie shows, it was an intense time in Washington: Confederate peace commissioners were trying to work out an end to the war, the House of Representatives was debating the 13th Amendment, and both events involved some shady political maneuvering, some of it by Lincoln himself.

Critics of the movie have pointed out that there were other events happening at the same time, which helped to push the 13th Amendment forward and end the war. Professor Eric Foner points out that “slavery died on the ground” as well as in the House, due to abolition efforts by feminist leaders like Susan B. Anthony, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the actions of free blacks themselves. However, the absence of such events is not really historical error, but rather a choice of focus. The movie is about Lincoln, and the politicians on both sides of the aisle who were directly involved in the process of passing the 13th Amendment and ending the war -- not about the actions of other involved parties, however important they might have actually been to the historical event. Their stories are not this movie’s to tell.

Another criticism, voiced by Kate Masur in her New York Times review of the movie , is the passivity of black characters in the movie. It is true that free African Americans were actively involved in efforts to get the 13th Amendment passed, and the movie could probably have shown this a bit more without significantly veering off-course, possibly by highlighting the role of Frederick Douglass, who does not appear in the movie, or by providing more context for black characters like Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker and one of the leaders of the African American community in Washington. Once again, however, this is not exactly an issue of historical accuracy (at least insofar as omissions are not errors) but of storytelling.

These arguments aside, there are a few actual historical “bloopers,” as they are called by Harold Holzer , the Lincoln biographer and content consultant for the movie. Some are simply small stretches of fact, such as the idea that Lincoln refused to talk peace with the Confederates until the amendment was ratified. In truth, the peace conference and the 13th Amendment were connected, and occurred around the same time, but it is difficult to say for sure that they were connected from the beginning, as the movie portrays.

Most of the other “bloopers” are there because of the dramatic touch they add to a scene, rather than because the filmmakers made an unintentional or uninformed mistake. For example, Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Fields) would never have watched the final voting from the House gallery, neither soldiers nor civilians would have had the Gettysburg Address memorized, and the fifty-cent piece did not bear Lincoln’s face at the time. Neither was Lincoln known to pull his written speech from the lining of his hat, or keep a portrait of William Henry Harrison in his office.

Of the few “bloopers” that seem to be genuine mistakes, none of them are damaging to the integrity of the story. They are minor issues that only scholars would notice, such as the fact that the movie portrays congressmen voting by state delegations and young Tad Lincoln playing with glass negatives from photographer Alexander Gardner. In fact, congressmen at the time voted alphabetically by name, and glass negatives would have been far too fragile for anyone to think of giving them to a small child.

In the end, these are small quibbles that have little bearing on the overall accuracy of the movie. The only truly questionable points involve people or events on which the historical record is silent or vague. Thaddeus Stephens’s relationship with his African American housekeeper cannot be proven beyond doubt to have been a romantic one, but there is enough evidence to make it seem extremely likely. The “backroom deals” portrayed in the movie are probably quite accurate, but they were of course kept fairly secret, so the precise details about them remain unknown. And we obviously do not have a transcript of every word that passed between Lincoln and his friends, family, or enemies; as a result, much of the movie’s dialogue is, by necessity, fiction.

So is Lincoln 100 percent accurate about every single detail? No. But it does accurately portray the events on a broad scale, and, more importantly, it offers an accurate overall view of the individuals involved. Day-Lewis’s Lincoln has been hailed as one of the most honest portrayals of the president to date -- right down to that unexpected voice, which was described by Lincoln’s contemporaries as being high and somewhat reedy, not the gravelly baritone we often imagine. One of the greatest triumphs of the film is the depth it adds to Lincoln, rather than simply portraying him as a one-dimensional (and historically inaccurate) saint. This Lincoln is undeniably a good man, but he is also a skilled politician, and he is willing to get his hands a bit dirty in order to accomplish something he knows to be right.

Director Steven Spielberg might actually have said it best. As the keynote speaker at the 149th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, he neatly explained the delicate balance between fact and fiction necessary to a film like Lincoln . “One of the jobs of art is to go to the impossible places that history must avoid,” he said. Exploring the unknowns of the past is a “betrayal of the job of the historian,” but it is part of the job of the filmmaker seeking to resurrect these lost collective memories.

In crafting Lincoln , Spielberg has more than done his part in that process. It is not a documentary, but a work of dramatic fiction rooted firmly in historical fact. His portrayals of the people and events of early 1865 might not be accurate in every minute detail, but they are truthful. And that might be more important.

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‘lincoln’: film review.

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as the 16th president in the historical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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'Lincoln' Review: 2012 Movie

Far from being a traditional biographical drama, Lincoln dedicates itself to doing something very few Hollywood films have ever attempted, much less succeeded at: showing, from historical example, how our political system works in an intimate procedural and personal manner. That the case in point is the hair-breadth passage by the House of Representatives of the epochal 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and that the principal orchestrator is President Abraham Lincoln in the last days of his life endow Steven Spielberg ‘s film with a great theme and subject, which are honored with intelligence, humor and relative restraint. Tony Kushner ‘s densely packed script has been directed by Spielberg in an efficient, unpretentious way that suggests Michael Curtiz at Warner Bros. in the 1940s, right down to the rogue’s gallery of great character actors in a multitude of bewhiskered supporting roles backing up a first-rate leading performance by Daniel Day-Lewis . The wall-to-wall talk and lack of much Civil War action might give off the aroma of schoolroom medicine to some, but the elemental drama being played out, bolstered by the prestige of the participants and a big push by Disney, should make this rare film about American history pay off commercially.

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First unveiled at an unannounced sneak preview at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 8, Lincoln  will receive its official world premiere on Nov. 8 at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles in advance of its Nov. 9 limited opening and wider release Nov. 16.

The Bottom Line An absorbing, densely packed, sometimes funny telling of the 16th president's masterful effort in manipulating the passage of the 13th Amendment.

Concentrating on the tumultuous period between January 1865 and the conclusion of the Civil War on April 9 and Lincoln’s assassination five days later, on Good Friday, this is history that plays out mostly in wood-paneled rooms darkened by thick drapes and heavy furniture and, increasingly, in the intimate House chamber where the strength of the anti-abolitionist Democrats will be tested against Lincoln’s moderates and the more zealous anti-slavery radicals of the young Republican Party.

Occasionally, there are glimpses of life outside the inner sanctums of government, first on the battlefield, where black Union troops join in the vicious hand-to-hand combat where the mud renders the gray and blue uniforms all but indistinguishable, then in the dusty streets of the nation’s capital and in the verdant surrounding countryside.

The stiffest challenge facing Kushner was to lay out enough exposition in the early going to give viewers their bearings while simultaneously jump-starting the film’s dramatic movement. Quite a bit of information simply has to be dropped in quickly to get it over with — Mary Todd Lincoln’s continuing depression over the death of a son three years earlier, her husband’s re-election the previous November, the need for Lincoln to win over some 20 Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority required to pass — but the estimable playwright who won a Pulitzer for 1992’s Angels in America  mostly manages to cover so many mandatory issues by plausibly making them the subjects of the characters’ vivid conversation.

Particularly helpful in this regard are the intimate talks between Lincoln (Day-Lewis) and his most valued adviser, Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn), as well with his party’s founder Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook, a famous Lincoln in his own time). Having signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and gotten easy Senate passage of the 13th Amendment the previous April, Lincoln is determined to push the House to act quickly and put his signature on the new law by Feb. 1, before the war is likely to end.

What follows is a course in political persuasion in all its forms: cajoling, intimidation, promises, horse-trading, strong-arming and intellectual persuasion, down-home style. In conversation and physical movement, Lincoln is a deliberate fellow who takes his time, a country lawyer whose rumpled exterior conceals abiding principles and an iron will, a man of no personal vanity or fancy education who is nevertheless unafraid to cite Euclid, notably in his equation of equality = fairness = justice, with which Lincoln frames the slavery issue.

Fundamentally unhappy in his family life with his almost continually complaining wife Mary (a very good Sally Field ), who despairs of being condemned to “four more years in this terrible house,” and oldest son Robert ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ), a college lad desperate to enlist in the Army over his parents’ objections, Lincoln seems to find the greatest pleasure in spinning amusing life-lesson yarns dating to his lawyering days. The film accrues much-needed levity from these interludes, less from the stories themselves than from the reactions of his captive audiences; by the third or fourth time Lincoln embarks on one of his tales, the polite attention paid by his listeners has descended to “here-he-goes-again” eye-rolling and ill-concealed smirking.

As he demonstrated in Angels in America, Kushner — who co-wrote Munich for Spielberg — is adept at juggling a huge number of characters without confusion. One of the main subplots details the efforts of three Republican roustabouts (James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson) to use any means necessary to change some minds on the Democratic side while at Lincoln’s behest delaying a high-level Confederate delegation making its way to Washington to talk peace. There also are occasional glimpses of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris) trying to discern whether the South is ready to call it quits.

But increasingly, attention focuses on Pennsylvania Rep. Thaddeus Stevens ( Tommy Lee Jones ), a lifelong activist for absolute equality among the races philosophically opposed to going along with a watered-down law. The loss of his and other radical Republicans’ support would spell disaster for Lincoln who, in all events, faces a massive challenge that calls on all the political, personal and persuasive skills he has honed over a lifetime.

At the film’s center, then, lies one of the remarkable characters in world history at the critical moment of his life. As Walt Whitman said of Lincoln (as he did of himself), “he contained multitudes,” and Day-Lewis’ sly, slow-burn performance wonderfully fulfills this description. Gangly, grizzled and, as his wife was known to say, “not pretty,” this Lincoln plainly shows his humble origins and is more disheveled than his Washington colleagues. With an astonishing physical resemblance to the real man, Day-Lewis excels when shifting into what was perhaps Lincoln’s most comfortable mode, that of frisky storyteller, especially in the way he seems to anticipate and relish his listeners’ reactions.

But he also is a hard-nosed negotiator with that critical attribute of great politicians in a democracy: an unyielding inner core of principle cloaked by a strategic willingness to compromise in the interests of getting his way. A long scene in which he hashes things out with his cabinet (the single most explicit evocation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals, the one credited partial source of the screenplay) vividly exhibits his skills in action. The rare moments when Lincoln loses his temper are startling but also hint that his outbursts might be preplanned for effect.

Lincoln seems most ill-at-ease in domestic exchanges with his family, especially with his harping wife, to whose repetitive complaints her husband cannot possibly invent any new answers, even if her sorrow is rooted in genuine depression.

The dramatic and raucous vote on the 13th Amendment is both exhilarating and unexpectedly humorous, with much shouting, threatening and fist-waving, fence-straddling Democrats being shamed by their colleagues and a gallery audience (including some blacks) hanging on every yeah and nay, climaxed, of course, by the exaltation of victory. Appomattox, with proud Gen. Robert E. Lee high on his white horse, is briefly shown, and Kushner and Spielberg have invented a novel way of portraying the fateful events at Ford’s Theatre that doesn’t even show John Wilkes Booth.

For whatever reason, the filmmakers have skipped the ripe opportunity to portray one of the most extraordinary and haunting episodes of this entire period, that of Lincoln’s nearly solitary early-morning walk through the streets of Richmond. The partly burning city had just been abandoned by the Confederate government, and Lincoln increasingly became surrounded by awestruck, suddenly free blacks who could scarcely believe who had just entered their midst, some reacting as if he were Jesus incarnate. Finally arriving at the capitol building, he entered the office of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, sat in his chair and quietly drank a glass of water.

In the event, Spielberg directs in a to-the-point, self-effacing style, with only minor instances of artificially inflated emotionalism and a humor that mostly undercuts eruptions of self-importance. It’s a conscientious piece of work very much in the service of the material, in the manner of the good old Hollywood pros, without frills or grandiosity. At the same time, however, it lacks that final larger dimension and poetic sense such as can be found in John Ford’s great 1939 Young Mr. Lincoln, to which Spielberg’s film is a biographical and thematic bookend.

Further helping matters is the mostly subdued score by John Williams, whose over-the-top contribution to War Horse last year proved so counterproductive to that film’s effect. Working predominantly in shades of blue and black, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski takes a similarly straightforward approach, while the period evocation achieved by many hands led by production designer Rick Carter, costume designer Joanna Johnston and the makeup and hair team is detailed and lacking in embalmed fastidiousness.

Other than Day-Lewis, acting honors go to Jones, who clearly relishes the rich role of Stevens and whose crusty smarts prove both formidable and funny. Very much a good guy here, Stevens in earlier cinematic days was always portrayed as an extremist villain, both in The Birth of a Nation and in the odd 1943 Andrew Johnson biographical drama Tennessee Johnson.

Venue: AFI Film Festival (closing night) Release: Friday, Nov. 9 (Disney/Touchstone) Production: DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Reliance Entertainment , Amblin Entertainment , Kennedy/Marshall Productions Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Tommy Lee Jones, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill, Tim Blake Nelson, Joseph Cross, Jared Harris, Lee Pace Director: Steven Spielberg Screenwriter: Tony Kushner, based in part on the the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln , by Doris Kearns Goodwin Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy Executive producers: Daniel Lupi, Jeff Skoll, Jonathan King Director of photography: Janusz Kaminski Production designer: Rick Carter Costume designer: Joanna Johnston Editor: Michael Kahn Music: John Williams Rated PG-13, 149 minutes

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Review: Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ a towering achievement

lincoln movie review essay

Kenneth Turan reviews ‘Lincoln’.

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Hollywood’s most successful director turns on a dime and delivers his most restrained, interior film. A celebrated playwright shines an illuminating light on no more than a sliver of a great man’s life. A brilliant actor surpasses even himself and makes us see a celebrated figure in ways we hadn’t anticipated. This is the power and the surprise of “Lincoln.”

Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Tony Kushner and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president of the United States, “Lincoln” unfolds during the final four months of the chief executive’s life as he focuses his energies on a dramatic struggle that has not previously loomed large in political mythology: his determination to get the House of Representatives to pass the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery.

This narrow focus has paradoxically enabled us to see Lincoln whole in a way a more broad-ranging film might have been unable to match. It has also made for a movie whose pleasures are subtle ones, that knows how to reveal the considerable drama inherent in the overarching battle of big ideas over the amendment as well as the small-bore skirmishes of political strategy and the nitty-gritty scramble for congressional votes.

VIDEO: ‘Lincoln’ trailer

These things all begin, as thoughtful films invariably do, with an excellent script. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for “Angels in America,” Kushner has always been adept at illuminating the interplay of the personal and the political. His literate screenplay, based on parts of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Lincoln,” is smart, dramatic and confident of the value of what it has to say.

Kushner has worked with Spielberg before (he co-wrote the Oscar-nominated “Munich” script) and his writing seems to bring out a level of restraint in their productions. There is nothing bravura or overly emotional about Spielberg’s direction here, but the impeccable filmmaking is no less impressive for being quiet and to the point. The director delivers selfless, pulled-back satisfactions: he’s there in service of the script and the acting, to enhance the spoken word rather than burnish his reputation.

The key speaker, obviously, is Day-Lewis. No one needs to be told at this late date what a consummate actor he is, but even those used to the way he disappears into roles will be startled by the marvelously relaxed way he morphs into this character and simply becomes Lincoln. While his heroic qualities are visible when they’re needed, Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is a deeply human individual, stooped and weary after four years of civil war but endowed with a palpable largeness of spirit and a genuine sense of humor.

PHOTOS: Lessons from the campaign trail -- on film

At ease in his own skin, Lincoln wears a shawl around the White House like he was born with it and is so prone to telling tales at every opportunity that his fed-up Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Bruce McGill) snaps in exasperation, “No, you’re not going to tell a story. I can’t bear to hear one.”

Though Day-Lewis’ work inevitably towers over “Lincoln,” one of the remarkable things about this production is not only how consistently good the acting is across some 145 speaking roles but how much the actors have been cast both for ability and resemblance to their historical counterparts, from major players such as Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) and firebrand Congressman Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) down to minor characters like amendment opponent Fernando Wood (Lee Pace) and Lincoln’s secretary John Nicolay (Jeremy Strong).

Working with his usual team of equals — cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, production designer Rick Carter, editor Michael Kahn, costume designer Joanna Johnston and composer John Williams — Spielberg has paid particular attention to creating a realistic world for his characters to inhabit, seeping us in the period and seeing to it that the color scheme and the muted lighting enhance the film’s naturalistic palette.

BUZZMETER: How ‘Lincoln’ is holding up in the awards race

Care was taken with the physical details as well, especially the interior of the White House, where Lincoln’s office was re-created with complete accuracy, and where the president interacts with his family, trying to placate his ever-emotional wife Mary (a convincing Sally Field), distraught after the death of their young son Willie, as well as oldest son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is desperate to enlist in the Union Army against his parents’ wishes.

The political core of “Lincoln” begins with the president’s determination, much to the displeasure of close advisor Seward, to get the House to pass the 13th Amendment. Fearful that the previously enacted Emancipation Proclamation might not stand up to legal challenges, Lincoln gets surprisingly steely as he insists that this simply must be done if slavery is to be permanently eradicated. The problem is getting the votes.

To help make this happen, Seward brings in a trio of arm-twisters, the 1860s versions of today’s lobbyists, who are charged by a president not shy about saying he is “clothed in immense power” to use any means necessary to round up the needed congressional votes. This trio, amusingly played by John Hawkes, James Spader and Tim Blake Nelson, are as close to comic relief as “Lincoln” gets.

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Because the stakes are so high, and because he turns out to be a master strategist, the president himself inevitably gets personally involved in playing politics. He deals with key leaders like Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), a conservative Republican who is eager for peace talks with the South, and of course Jones’ Stevens, an irascible, vitriolic abolitionist (“the meanest man in Congress” according to Roy Blount Jr.) who is just getting warmed up when he calls an opponent a “fatuous nincompoop.”

One of the surprises and the pleasures of “Lincoln” is its portrait of the president as a man gifted at reconciling irreconcilable points of view, someone who wouldn’t hesitate to play both ends against the middle and even stretch the truth in the service of the greater good.

Kushner has said that he wrote “Lincoln” because, upset at today’s endemic lack of faith in governance, he wanted to tell a story that “shows that you can achieve miraculous, beautiful things through the democratic system.” It’s a lesson that couldn’t be more timely, or more thoroughly dramatic.

MPAA rating: PG-13 for an intense scene of war violence, some images of carnage and brief strong language

Running time: 2 hours, 29 minutes

Playing: In limited release

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The Critical Movie Critics

Movie Review: Lincoln (2012)

  • Charlie Juhl
  • Movie Reviews
  • 13 responses
  • --> November 15, 2012

Lincoln (2012) by The Critical Movie Critics

Leading the North.

In 2012, Abraham Lincoln is on currency, in hundreds of dusty books, and sitting in a chair in his own memorial at one end of the National Mall. His image is stale; he is not a man, but an unknowable symbol. Steven Spielberg, however, fashions the legend into a flesh and blood human being in his biopic Lincoln . This Abraham (Daniel Day-Lewis) tells jokes, argues with his wife, and walks with a hunch in his shoulders as if an imaginary weight bears down on them. Lincoln is no longer just 25% of Mt. Rushmore, he is the most fascinating, sympathetic, and memorable character you will see on a movie screen this year.

Hard choices must be made to tell Abraham Lincoln’s story. Do you start with his birth and childhood? Do you cover his early legal and congressional career? Which part of his presidency do you focus on and if you include the assassination, will that be most of the story or just the end? Spielberg and writer Tony Kushner, who bases his screenplay on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” decide to focus not just on Lincoln’s presidency, but on a very specific time just after his re-election in January 1865. The Civil War is entering its fourth year and hundreds of thousands are dead on bloodied battlefields, yet there is a sense in the air that the war’s conclusion is near. It is anyone’s guess how it will end, but that does not stop them from discussing what will come after during Reconstruction. Some argue for the Union to take revenge against the south instead of leniency, some argue for a negotiated peace instead of an official surrender, and some argue for slavery’s return instead of full abolition.

Lincoln knows full well that at the war’s end, the courts may declare his Emancipation Proclamation illegal. The only way to ensure slavery’s demise is to pass an amendment to the Constitution (today it is the 13th Amendment). To do that, the House of Representatives must vote in favor of it with a two-thirds majority. But in 1865, there is no shortage of Congressmen who remain pro-slavery and dead set against the equaling of the races which they see as naturally separated by God. Convincing men to change their long standing beliefs seems an impossible task, and it is this task Lincoln, his Cabinet, and his cronies must accomplish if they hope to succeed.

Anyone paying attention in high school knows about the 13th Amendment and ultimately knows what will happen in the end. Therefore, it is a true credit to Spielberg, Kushner, and the cast that the process of its life in Congress is fraught with tension, suspense, and real emotions. Secretary of State Seward (David Strathairn) marshals the men who will do the arm twisting. The arm twisters, including Mr. Bilbo (James Spader) and Mr. Latham (John Hawkes) are greasy insiders promising patronage jobs and many other enticements to the fence-sitters. The fence-sitters are being pulled and pushed by their Congressional leaders including Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) and Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook). Observing their debates from the balcony is Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) who feels some shame from her earlier bouts of grief and depression over her deceased son Willie, yet remains determined to keep her oldest son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), from enlisting.

Lincoln (2012) by The Critical Movie Critics

Looking presidential.

Behind all of this vast political machinery, corruption, debating, and harsh words stands a weary man quick to tell a witty story to make his point and lead a torn country towards his vision of a united future. Lincoln is a masterpiece of filmmaking and is an unforgettable film to watch in a theater. It will be nominated for an array of Oscars with wins most likely for Day-Lewis and Spielberg. Daniel Day-Lewis may be the most gifted actor currently working when his chooses to take on a role, which only happens every other year or so (everybody still remembers Daniel Plainview from “ There Will Be Blood ” and Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting from “ Gangs of New York “). He raises his voice by what sounds like an entire octave to speak in what the historians say was Lincoln’s higher-pitched tone. He looks down at the table or the ground when in conversation but when required, he will command the room’s attention when he knows he must bind people together to do the right thing.

Crafting a biopic around a man as iconic as Abraham Lincoln requires a firm hand and concrete decision-making. If you include too much material from too many episodes in his life, the movie will feel stretched, light, and make much less of an impact on the audience because of its lack of depth in any particular area. By focusing Lincoln on a very specific and limited time frame, shaping the central conflict over one of the most transformative constitutional amendments, and employing actors who all give superior performances based on a stellar script, Spielberg has made what will most likely be the best film of the year and one which all should take the time and go see.

Tagged: civil war , novel adaptation , president , slavery

The Critical Movie Critics

I like movies and they like me right back. You can find out how much by visiting my personal site Citizen Charlie .

Movie Review: The Gatekeepers (2012) Movie Review: Beautiful Creatures (2013) Movie Review: Warm Bodies (2013) Movie Review: Parker (2013) Movie Review: Mama (2013) Movie Review: 5 Broken Cameras (2011) Movie Review: Gangster Squad (2013)

'Movie Review: Lincoln (2012)' have 13 comments

The Critical Movie Critics

November 15, 2012 @ 10:32 pm Sparling

The takeaway from Lincoln is politicians were just as dirty then as they are now.

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The Critical Movie Critics

November 15, 2012 @ 11:00 pm Porknog

The Oscar is Day-Lewis’. No contest – just give it to him now and be done with it.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 6:00 pm Baconator

Same could be said for Spielberg.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 15, 2012 @ 11:26 pm Grasshopper

SPOILER ALERT: Lincoln gets shot and dies.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 5:07 am Lain

One can only hope the powdered wig makes a comeback. Not only does Tommy Lee Jones own the part of Thaddeus Stevens he makes it look good too.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 10:19 am Chloe

My only gripe is the ending. Spielberg should have ended the film with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. The addition of Lincoln’s assassination was unnecessary.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 12:22 pm Aspie182

Not much of a biopic. Damn good movie about the passage of the 13th ammendment but not a Lincoln biography.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 12:41 pm chacha

Lincoln is Spielberg at his directorial best. He made dramatic and engaging the political process which is, if you’ve ever watched CSPAN, a drag to watch.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 17, 2012 @ 1:35 pm Luraly

Not his best. Character arcs for Mary (Sally Field) and Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) were incomplete. “Saving Private Ryan” is still his best work.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 2:43 pm Ramses

Movie made me respect Lincoln all the more.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 16, 2012 @ 9:06 pm Huff

Hear, hear!

The Critical Movie Critics

November 18, 2012 @ 6:41 pm Eve

Daniel Day-Lewis is the greatest character actor alive today. The Oscar is his.

The Critical Movie Critics

November 23, 2012 @ 7:13 am wrathofthetitans

nice biography movie,great watch.

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We ask a historian: just how accurate is 'lincoln'.

lincoln movie review essay

Lincoln biographer Ronald White lauds the accuracy of Daniel Day-Lewis' depiction of the 16th president. DreamWorks hide caption

A great many families going to the movies over this Thanksgiving weekend will probably see Lincoln , Steven Spielberg's new film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and an impressive cast.

Based on a biography by Doris Kearns Goodwin, but scripted by playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner, it's been very well-reviewed, but here's a question: How true to history is it?

Ronald White, author of A. Lincoln: A Biography , tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer that if a ninth-grader were to write a school paper based on the film, she'd find that its "dramatic core" is basically on target.

Interview Highlights

On the film's overall historical correctness

"The dramatic core of this remarkable four months of trying to pass the 13th Amendment [which banned slavery] is true. Is every word true? No. Did Lincoln say, 'And to unborn generations ...'? No. But this is not a documentary. And so I think the delicate balance or blend between history and dramatic art comes off quite well."

On William Seward and the three lobbyists he employs

"I think the movie is wanting in one way to disabuse us of the sense that Lincoln is this high-minded idealist who wouldn't stoop to using the machine to get votes. And [Secretary of State] Seward — remember, he was Lincoln's chief rival for the Republican nomination for president — is a shrewd politician. He's in this with Lincoln; he's not an unwilling co-conspirator. And he's willing to do things sort of outside the box, that Lincoln perhaps can't do. I doubt that Lincoln actually met these three men, but Seward delivers the votes [on the 13th Amendment] in a variety of ways."

On the over-the-top drama of House debates in the film

"You don't hear anything in the House anymore; you only hear someone giving an address for C-SPAN. I mean, one of the wonderful parts of the movie is that all of them are there, they're listening; some of them are going to be persuaded. It suggests an earlier time of a much more active Congress."

On radical Republican leader Thaddeus Stevens, played as a hero by Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln , but as a villain in 1942's Tennessee Johnson

"The earlier movie ... was produced before the civil rights movement, or in the Gone With the Wind movement, when yes, abolitionists were evil guys. Now, since the civil rights movement, we see them as courageous leaders advocating rights for African-Americans, and so we have a different viewpoint on Thaddeus Stevens. I think the movie gets it right here."

On Kate Maser's New York Times op-ed, which criticized the film for keeping black people quietly in the background

"I think that's a point well taken. And what the audience doesn't fully understand, in the final scene — almost the final scene — where suddenly African-Americans arrive in the balcony as the final vote is to be taken, that one of those is Charles Douglass, the son of Frederick Douglass. Charles had fought in the famous Massachusetts 54th; he will write to his father after that climactic vote: 'Oh, Father, how wonderful it is. People were cheering, they were crying tears of joy.' So that had the potential for more black agency, but it doesn't come to full fruition in the film."

On whether freeing the slaves was the prime motive of Abraham Lincoln, as the film suggests

"I think we still don't understand, sadly, although historians have been telling us this for a generation — that slavery really was a cause of the war. However, Lincoln did start the war to save the Union; he did not start the war originally to free the slaves. But that became a purpose for him when he realized that he could no longer move forward without a true understanding of liberty and union. He ran in 1864 for re-election on the slogan 'Liberty and Union,' and so it becomes the second purpose of the Civil War."

On Daniel Day-Lewis

"I was very pleased with Daniel Day-Lewis' depiction of Lincoln. He does a delicate balance between the homely Lincoln — the homespun Lincoln — and the high Lincoln of the second inaugural address. He walks like Lincoln, the way he puts his feet down one at a time. He talks like Lincoln — not the baritone voice of Disneyland, but the high tenor voice. Daniel Day-Lewis studied Lincoln intensely, and what comes out is a very accurate depiction of the spirit of the man."

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Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012): The Unofficial Scene-by-Scene Summary

GO TO “LINCOLN” MOVIE TEACHER’S GUIDE

SCENE 1:  OPENING TITLES (00:00)

[EARLY JANUARY 1865]

SCENE 2: LINCOLN’S DREAM (6:11) 

Part 2:   (White House interior, nighttime) The second scene opens with a visualization of one of Lincoln’s recent dreams.  Abraham & Mary Lincoln are then seen inside Mrs. Lincoln’s White House boudoir, discussing the dream and other subjects, including the possibility of a new push for the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.

SCENE 3: A NEW AMENDMENT (13:57)

Part 5:   (White House, 2d floor office, daytime) Lincoln & Seward continue their discussion. Mr. and Mrs. Jolly from Jefferson City, Missouri enter the office and Seward uses the couple to illustrate a point about the Thirteenth Amendment.

SCENE 4: WAR POWERS (23:15)

SCENE 5: THE HOUSE DEBATE (35:10)

[JANUARY 9, 1865]

SCENE 6: GETTING OUT THE VOTE (40:30)

Part 13: (Various locations around Washington, day and night) Robert Lincoln tries to see his father, but President Lincoln focuses instead on finishing a discussion with Preston Blair, who has returned from Richmond with news about peace talks. A series of short snapshots show the Seward Lobby (Latham, Schell and Bilbo) in action, targeting a series of lame duck Democratic congressmen with offers of administration jobs and cash in exchange for switching votes in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment.

SCENE 7: SEEDS OF TIME (45:55)

[JANUARY 11, 1865]

Part 14: (White House office, early evening) The President and Secretary Seward discuss the state of the lobbying efforts and Seward reveals his anger at the President’s decision to authorize peace negotiations without consulting him.  The scene then shifts briefly to “No Man’s Land” outside of Petersburg, VA and captures the Confederate officials being transported into Union lines, before returning the point-of-view to the White House for the heated argument between Seward and Lincoln over Blair’s intervention in the peace process.

[JANUARY 12, 1865]

Quick cut-away shows Confederate officials arriving at City Point –Grant’s Headquarters

[JANUARY 14, 1865]

SCENE 8: GRAND RECEPTION (52:55)

Part 16: (White House reception room, early evening) Mary Lincoln cautiously greets leading Radicals in the receiving line for the Grand Reception and engages in a particularly tension-filled conversation with Thaddeus Stevens.

SCENE 9: FALLEN AT WILMINGTON (59:45)

[JANUARY 16, 17, 18, OR 19, 1865]

Part 22: (Outside in woods, morning)  Clay Hawkins and W.N. Bilbo, the lobbyist, are hunting and discussing their deal.  Hawkins seems spooked by the threats against him and literally starts to run away from the deal and Bilbo as they argue over his commitment.

SCENE 10:  NO SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS LEFT (1:08)

[JANUARY 20, 1865]

Part 25: (Seward residence, Lafayette Square, late night) Seward finishes reading the telegram from Grant with Lincoln present, wrapped in a shawl.  They discuss how to proceed.

[JANUARY 21, 1865]

SCENE 11: EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW (1:18)

[JANUARY 27, 1865]

Part 28: (House of Representatives, morning) Anxiety rises as Thaddeus Stevens prepares to take the floor.  Democratic congressmen led by Fernando Wood attempt to bait the old Radical leader into making intemperate remarks about social revolution and equality.  Stevens stubbornly refuses to say anything beyond the amendment’s goal of preserving “equality before the law.”  Mary Lincoln watches in admiration but her black dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, despises the nature of the debate and leaves the gallery abruptly.  Stevens controls his tongue but hurls insults at his Democratic opponents.  His junior colleague, Asa Vintner Litton, later expresses disappointment in the performance and Stevens attempts to explain and defend his refusal to promise support for civil rights at that moment.

SCENE 12: ROBERT’S AMBITION (1:24)

Part 31: (Washington theater, evening)  The Lincoln’s are attending the opera to view a performance of “Faust.”  Elizabeth Keckley is also present.  Mary Lincoln reveals to her husband that the only way she can reconcile his various decisions will be if he succeeds in securing the Thirteenth Amendment.  That will end the war, in her opinion, and prevent her son from risking his life.

SCENE 13: BIPARTISAN SUPPORT (1:35)

[JANUARY 28, 29 OR 30, 1865]

Part 35: (Hotel, Washington, late night) A return to the previous point-of-view as Lincoln continues his conversation with the lobbyists, now focusing on George Yeaman, a Democratic congressman from Kentucky.

SCENE 14: FAIRNESS AND FREEDOM (1:39)

Part 36: (Seward’s office, State Department, daytime)  Lincoln and Seward are facing a nervous Congressman Yeaman who is resisting any switch of his vote in favor of the amendment.  Lincoln attempts to persuade him, answering various objections, but the conversation ends inconclusively.

Part 37: (Home of Congressman Hutton, Washington, night) Lincoln discusses the amendment outside the front door of a Democratic congressman named Hutton, whose brother has died fighting for the Union.

SCENE 15: MORNING OF THE VOTE (1:46)

[JANUARY 31, 1865]

Part 40: (Lincoln’s White House office, afternoon)  Hay makes it to Lincoln first, with Bilbo, heavily winded, behind him.  Lincoln reads the motion from the House and crafts a response.   Reading over his shoulder, Hay worries about the president making any false representations to Congress.  Lincoln denies doing so and insists that they take his reply back to the Congress.

SCENE 16: THIS IS HISTORY (1:52)

SCENE 17: CELEBRATION (2:02)

[FEBRUARY 3, 1865]

SCENE 18: PETERSBURG (2:09)

[APRIL 3, 1865]

[APRIL 9, 1865]

Quick cut-away showing General Lee surrendering to General Grant at Appomattox.   Robert Lincoln is present as a junior officer on Grant’s staff.

[APRIL 14, 1865]

Part 46: (Washington streets, carriage ride, afternoon) The President and Mrs. Lincoln are having a happy conversation about their future travel plans now that the war has essentially ended.

SCENE 19: NOW HE BELONGS TO THE AGES (2:09)

Part 48: (Grover’s Theatre, evening) A performance on the stage is interrupted by the announcement that the president has been shot at another theater.  Tad Lincoln, in the audience, is rushed out in anguish as pandemonium erupts.

[APRIL 15, 1865]

Part 49: (Peterson’s Boarding House, early morning) The dying president lays on the bed in the residence across from where he had been shot at Ford’s Theatre.  Cabinet officials, officers and the president’s family gather around him as he dies at 7:22 am.

[MARCH 4, 1865]

SCENE 20:  CREDITS (2:21)

Images from the “Lincoln” movie courtesy of Dreamworks

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Credits & Contacts

Producer: Matthew Pinsker House Divided Project PO Box 1773 / Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013 [email protected]

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Forgotten Abolitionist: John A.J. Creswell of Maryland

The “Lincoln” Movie by Steven Spielberg Essay

History knows many statesmen who have become the victims of their own political activities, the victims of power. Abraham Lincoln is one of them. There are a lot of movies which attempt to show President Lincoln and the story of his life and work. Such movies as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) deserve attention, however, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) starring Daniel Day-Lewis is a masterpiece. This movie is positioned as a one for people and about people. It is a model of American democracy even though the movie shows dirty side of political life. Lincoln is a good demonstration of the fact that morality and politics are two uncombined issues. One of the main focuses of the movie is the process of adoption of the 13 th Amendment of the Constitution devoted to the abolishment of slavery. Even though the methods used while the process do not always deserve pride, the entire adoption process is a good example of successful political technique of the early American democracy. The movie is based on the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln .

Speaking of the role of the President in the movie, it should be stated that the director managed to show Lincoln as he is seen by the American people, a person who managed to realize American dream. Originated from a poor family, Lincoln worked hard to achieve prosperity, wealthy and power. The background action in the movie is a Civil War. It is obligatory for Lincoln to sign up the Amendment up to the end of the Civil War in order to make sure that already freed slaved are not going to be enslaved one more time. A film director seems to create a parallel between a struggle for voices in congress and a struggle at the battlefields. Each time the discussion is shown in the parliament, each remembers the episodes from the battlefields and vice versa. All the events in the movie are interconnected. Steven Spielberg has always been a master of movies creation and he has proven it one more time.

One more particular side of the movie is about Vampires. The theme of Vampires has become interesting for people recently, but Lincoln is not about love and other tender relationships. It is not about revenge or other emotions. Fighting with Vampires, Lincoln wants to protect his family, he tries to make sure that he and those who he loves are going to be safe. This particular desire to make the country safe for its citizens is delivered in the politics.

Speaking about the perceptional side of the film, it should be stated that from the very beginning and up to the final scene a viewer is excited and impressed. The emotions in the movie are delivered to the audience and it is impossible to remain careless to the situation. Loud announcements, happy victories and painful defeats, all this spectrum of emotions are guaranteed. The main idea of the movie is not only to show how the Amendment was adopted, but to underline one more time how hard and painful a way to the real democracy was, how difficult it was to insure everybody that slavery abolishment was necessary. The first steps on the way to American democracy are presented and this is a real value of the movie.

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IvyPanda . "The "Lincoln" Movie by Steven Spielberg." August 5, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-lincoln-movie-by-steven-spielberg/.

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Best Movies Essay Examples

“lincoln” 2012 movie review.

1849 words | 6 page(s)

“Lincoln” is a film directed by Steven Spielberg that was produced in 2012. A film about former president Abraham Lincoln, the film starred Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Lewis played Abraham Lincoln, with Field starring as Mary Todd Lincoln, the first lady. Gordon-Levitt was Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of the president who attended Harvard and played a role in the Army. Strathairn had a highly political role as he depicted William Seward, the secretary of state during much of Lincoln’s presidency.

The film was a complex biography on Abraham Lincoln’s life, but it also focused on many of the issues that took place around the time that Lincoln took office. Lincoln’s life was especially tumultuous, as he presided in office while slavery was at its height and made several important decisions during the Civil War. Lincoln, of course, was murdered by John Wilkes Booth, and the film tells the story both of his life and his untimely death. The film’s initial focus is on the Emancipation Proclamation and some of the political gamesmanship that took place after its formation and conceptualization. Lincoln wanted to free the slaves quickly, but he and his fellow Republicans feared that their efforts would be stifled by political enemies who sought to take out their aggression on the rest of the country. The film centers on the back and forth that takes place between Lincoln and several political allies, as he is looking to build support for a constitutional amendment banning slavery. He is often forced to consider a wide range of different things, though, and he is forced to confront the reality that radical Republicans who support him will not go for any solution that allows slavery to stay intact. The film concludes with Lincoln letting Confederate leaders know that slavery could not continue, and it traces its way through the end of the Civil War. Finally, the film shows that Lincoln has been assassinated, the final culmination of his work and his life as something of a political adventurer.

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One of the primary strengths of this film, and what made it a real winner for me, was the quality of acting. Daniel Day Lewis played an exceptional Abraham Lincoln. He both had the look and the demeanor, displaying the ways in which Lincoln had to deftly maneuver in order to get his political agenda passed during a tough time in politics. Likewise, I liked the ways in which this film painted the picture of Lincoln’s internal struggle. It shows him meeting with individual members of the Union Army, and it even showed him making some contact with black soldiers. The film made an effort to show Lincoln as the calculated, reflective individual that he apparently was. Lincoln’s decision on slavery had many different elements. It was one part moralism and another part political expediency (Goodwin). The goal of the film was to show the many sides of Lincoln and ensure that people understood the political side of the decision to end slavery. I especially liked the ways in which the film showed the political aspect without getting bogged down in the difficult details.

The film raises tremendous issues and questions, but this is not exactly a weakness. For instance, it asks the question of just how much Lincoln was driven by his sense of moral justice and how much his decision to end slavery was driven by political motives. It makes the viewer question whether this inquiry even matters. If Lincoln was doing the right thing, does it really matter why he was doing so? In reality, his decision to end slavery had every bit as much of an effect on the people of the United States regardless of his ultimate motivation.

One of the aspects of the film that I did not particularly enjoy was the way in minimizes the death of Lincoln. Lincoln’s life was, of course, quite spectacular, and one could hardly expect the filmmakers to focus the bulk of their attention on the man’s death. Still, it seemed as if the death was an afterthought to the actual story. In reality, Lincoln’s death was every bit as much of the story as his life. It is important because it shows the real courage that it took for Lincoln to argue for reform. In the United States, a wide range of leaders who have spoken up for any kind of racial justice have been gunned down. From Lincoln to both Kennedys to Martin Luther King, Jr., this is a part of the enduring legacy of the United States. The fact that Lincoln paid with his life for his brave decision is an important aspect of Lincoln’s life that must be considered when one is thinking about Lincoln’s life. If I had been writing this movie or directing it, I would have focused more time on the death and its bigger implications.

With any film dealing with history, there are bound to be claims that the film distorted the real story, or, in some cases, made outright changes to suit an agenda. Lincoln was true to form in many regards, but there were some instances where the filmmaker stretched the truth in order to make a point and make the film more entertaining, too. One part of the film that is especially dramatized is the one where the two soldiers are reciting the Gettysburg address to Lincoln. This scene is designed to serve as something of an “ah-ha” moment for Lincoln. He hears a black soldier reciting his words, and the filmmakers use this device to show Lincoln making some important recognitions. According to many historians, this scene never took place. Many argue that it could not have taken place, either, because soldiers would not have been given that kind of unfettered access to the president. Likewise, many argue that while the Gettysburg address has been memorized by many today, it was not given the kind of wide acclaim back then. There is little chance that any person would have taken the time to memorize it during that period.

One of the most egregious changes to the real history of the time came when Spielberg and company changed the tally numbers on the vote to end slavery. In order to create more drama and try to emphasize the split in the country at the time, Spielberg got very creative, noting that some congress members voted “nay” on the amendment when they actually voted for the amendment. This could be seen as a biased move designed to depict the situation as more dire than it actually was. It could also be seen as a device used to make the movie more interesting. Whatever the case, the film’s creators did toy with this part of history, as it appears that the actual vote was much different than how it was portrayed.

There were many scenes involving congressman Thaddeus Stevens that were highly dramatized. While the film gets many things right about his contentious relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, it is highly unlikely that they ever had a public spat like the one in the movie (Paludan). Likewise, historians suggest that Lincoln, while highly political in nature, would not have been observing House meetings from above. The movie uses this to highlight the fight between the two, but this is a liberty that the creators took in order to add more conflict. Likewise, Stevens himself is highly dramatized in a way that was probably not true. He is shown as being more contentious and disrespectful than he was in real life.

Likewise, the film botches the ending on how Lincoln looked when he died. In the film, Lincoln dies in his night gown, looking very comfortable. In real life, Lincoln died naked, as the doctors had been looking at his wounds in order to try and save his life (Nicolay). While this may seem like a small thing, it is another sign of how the film’s creators simply threw in the president’s death as something of an add-on to the movie.

It would be difficult to suggest that the film adds anything to the public consciousness on Abraham Lincoln. As one of the most popular presidents of all-time, Lincoln has been highly studied and scrutinized by all sorts of different people over the last century and a half. What the film does do, however, is highlight some of the truths on Lincoln. It also brings out the personality of his wife and family members more than any other work. These are the characters that are often forgotten by history, but the film shows the ways that they played an important role both in Lincoln’s life and in the political debate that raged on during that time.

The film helps to “color” Lincoln. By this, it is meant that the film adds detail and helps to create the kind of complex picture that truly respects who Lincoln was as both a president and as a man. Throughout the film, Lincoln is shown as a person willing to listen to many different perspectives. He is also showed as a highly political man. In some parts of the academic world, there is a tendency to romanticize about Lincoln. This film does its fair share of that, but one area where it refuses to romanticize is on the question of Lincoln’s willingness to engage in political interplay. As the film’s creators show, Lincoln is every bit as involved in the political fray as those around him. This is perhaps the reason why Lincoln was able to negotiate one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of America.

This film brings about a wide range of different lessons that can be learned. It is a film that treats history with a complex brush. The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and other Lincoln-related events are often dealt with in history books with a very simplistic approach. Rather than viewing the situation as a complex one that demanded lots of political maneuvering, those books paint the president’s decision as a simple one. Any person viewing this movie will know much more about Lincoln, his decision-making processes, and the things that caused him to want to put an end to slavery. While the movie is not completely true to history, it is true enough to history that it can be used to supplement any academic discussion on the nature of Lincoln. Overall, it is a strong film, and the presence of Daniel Day Lewis makes it even stronger. Lewis gives Lincoln the kind of performance that he needs, and the creators of the film were willing to stay true enough to history so that “Lincoln” would not become a biased farce of a film.

  • Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of rivals: The political genius of Abraham Lincoln. SimonandSchuster. com, 2005.
  • Nicolay, John George, and John Hay. Abraham Lincoln: a history. Vol. 10. Century Company, 1917.
  • Paludan, Phillip Shaw. The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994.

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COMMENTS

  1. Lincoln movie review & film summary (2012)

    Reviews A saintly wheeler-dealer Roger Ebert November 07, 2012 Tweet Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois.

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  10. Movie Review: Lincoln (2012)

    Looking presidential. Behind all of this vast political machinery, corruption, debating, and harsh words stands a weary man quick to tell a witty story to make his point and lead a torn country towards his vision of a united future. Lincoln is a masterpiece of filmmaking and is an unforgettable film to watch in a theater.

  11. We Ask A Historian: Just How Accurate Is 'Lincoln'?

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    Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" (2012) is a two-and-a-half hour film that zeroes in on a defining moment from near the end of the Civil War -January 1865 and the debate over the proposed amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery. The film claims that it was "Based in Part on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln ...

  14. Lincoln' Movie Review Essay

    Download There have been many different articles, biographies, and much more that have been published about the life of Abraham Lincoln to educate people on his life as a president, a father, and an all-American hero. This film was entirely based on the last four months of Lincoln's efforts in fighting for the 13 Amendment to be passed as a law.

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  17. Lincoln' Movie Review: Critical Essay

    Lincoln' Movie Review: Critical Essay Cite This Essay Download Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg, was made not too long ago in 2012. Because this film was produced relatively recently, the production quality was obviously more advanced than other movies about the civil war.

  18. The "Lincoln" Movie by Steven Spielberg

    Lincoln is a good demonstration of the fact that morality and politics are two uncombined issues. One of the main focuses of the movie is the process of adoption of the 13 th Amendment of the Constitution devoted to the abolishment of slavery.

  19. Lincoln Movie Review

    Lincoln Movie Review. Period 6. The movie Lincoln, directed by the infamous Steven Spielberg, is based on the life of Abraham Lincoln and his efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would abolish slavery completely. With the assumption that the Civil War would end in one month, however, Abraham feels it ...

  20. Essay about Lincoln, the Movie

    Essay about Lincoln, the Movie. 702 Words 3 Pages. At the beginning of the movie we see Lincoln talking to two African Americans who served in the war, and they went on to say that they loved his speech and one of them even quoted the end of his speech. This movie shows us how much we need rescuing. According to Spielberg, Lincoln and his ...

  21. A Review of the Movie "Lincoln"

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  22. "Lincoln" 2012 Movie Review

    The film raises tremendous issues and questions, but this is not exactly a weakness. For instance, it asks the question of just how much Lincoln was driven by his sense of moral justice and how much his decision to end slavery was driven by political motives. It makes the viewer question whether this inquiry even matters.

  23. Lincoln Movie Reflection Essay Example For FREE

    The movie, Lincoln, focused on the later years of the president's life, when he was trying to pass the 13th amendment, which eradicated slavery.