1. Wow. Impressive film-making at every level: casting and script particularly, but obviously on its game in every area. From at least the mid-90s to the present, the Hollywood establishment has been floundering, and partly because it really is guilty of some of the sins conservatives like John Nolte of Big Hollywood have accused it of, but none of those failings is on display here. With the John Williams’ music ringing in your ears, you leave thinking: Hollywood rules!
2. The casting is particularly impressive—Daniel Day Lewis, of course (although I remain unsure about how he delivered the Second Innagural), Sally Fields, Tommy Lee Jones, and David Strathairn—but is perhaps even more so for the minor parts. They found a guy, for example, who could do a spitting image presentation of CSA V.P. Alexander Stephens. Like so many of the scores of “minor parts,” in the film, often portrayals of politicians, the Stephens character is a real presence, and his few lines are framed and delivered with great significance.
3. “Political History” takes center stage here. Legislative debate-sessions, moments with Lincoln and his top councilors, questions of Constitutional interpretation, and one-on-one vote-wheedling pitches. Very refreshingly adult, and without most of the usual emotional cues. Un-Spielbergian in that way. Subtle dramatic art, and no less powerful for it. The plot is interesting, and yet the material is above most audience members’ heads. Two persons I saw it with who are not well-versed in U.S. history, my wife and a friend, enjoyed the film. My friend, whose movie tastes are in some ways more mainstream, more open to the action-type-film, expressed some frustration with the level of detail, the many debates, etc., but both generally enjoyed it.
4. The story here, primarily about the Congressional phase of the Thirteenth Amendment’s passage, is not terribly well-known: also amid my viewing companions was my friend and Lincoln scholar Lucas Morel, and while I emerged feeling a bit guilty for not having previously known how close the vote on the Amendment was, Lucas confessed to the same basic ignorance. It’s just one of those episodes that for whatever reason, historians have not paid much attention to. Lucas of course was able to school us on many other of the film’s details, such as the Hampton Roads peace-feeler talks with CSA delegates near the end of the war, but still. The political history presented in this film is at times above everyone’s heads! Kushner and Speilberg still make it work. Will be interesting to see what the historians best qualified to speak on this episode say about it.
5. That’s one thing to always remember about history–wherever we have the records that allow us to reconstruct the history of even just one month of republican politics, we always find a level of complexity totally missing from most survey accounts. You aren’t any sort of student of history if you only read books that cover 10 years or more–you just aren’t. And sometimes, even more minute detail, about a month in 1865, or five days in May 1940, are needed. With this film, we learn that an event that could have changed the fortunes of Reconstruction dramatically–an early defeat of the Thirteenth Amendment, almost happened! And, shockingly, almost none of us knew this until seeing this film.
6. One thing I forgot to ask Lucas about, although I’m not sure he knows either, was a key political choice Lincoln makes, which is to press forward for Congressional approval of the amendment during a lame-duck session, in which he faced more Democratic opposition than he would have only a few months later. Was it this, and this alone, that made the vote close? And if so, wasn’t it imprudent of Lincoln to have risked a public defeat of the Amendment, when he perhaps could have easily passed it later?
7. I have no complaints about the historical accuracy of the film. Lucas had none either, but noted that an early exchange of Lincoln’s with two black soldiers was almost certainly made-up.
8. I have no political-agenda complaints about the film. Lucas had none either.
9. There is a salutary emphasis on the presence of deception in politics, of both Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens making statements that were lawyer-ly and not perfectly frank, of not letting the public know, or be fully exposed to, their opinions on a number of controversial Reconstruction issues, black suffrage particularly.
10. I suppose one could read a vindication of Obama’s trimming and lying about his opposition to gay marriage into that. It’s just that in giving us the real Thaddeus and Abe, I think the film actually reveals how much more artful and serious about the charge of falsehood politicians of that time were than Obama. Obama trims, fibs, delays, obfuscates, and declines to comment like many a politician, but unlike these older ones, he also often does this Soviet-esque Big Lie thing: he gives us a bald-faced falsehood, about which he then does a let-me-be-clear obfuscation of what he lied about, refuses to answer any more questions about it, and the press refuses to keep pressing him on it. His lying is at another level, and requires (and encourages) a more cynical “that’s politics” attitude on the part of the public. At the specific level, I don’t think a close comparison of his sort of trimming on gay marriage would compare all that favorably to the sort we see Lincoln and Stevens engaging in here. I’m open to correction on that last point by anyone who actually conducts such a comparison. Still, while some trace of Kushner’s and Speilberg’s politics, and judgment of Obama, must be somewhere in the film, they have appropriately restrained themselves from doing anything remotely obvious. To their credit, I can’t know that the thought about Obama’s gay marriage deceptions even crossed their minds.
11. Go see it. And then go see it again. Encourage this kind of film-making.
More at Powerline.
November 26th, 2012 | 11:08 am
[...] game in every area. From at least the mid-90s to the present, the Hollywood establishment Source: Postmodern Conservative Category: Blogs and [...]
November 26th, 2012 | 12:06 pm
Oh, and I forgot to plug Peter’s contribution here: http://bigthink.com/rightly-understood/the-best-lincoln-ever Not sure about your agreement with the commenter Szabo there, Peter. And wow, it appears that 4/5 of the Big Think commenters are pretty ungracious and unthoughtful. They got axes to grind and don’t want to seriously think about Lincoln or the film.
November 26th, 2012 | 1:31 pm
So thanks for the fine comments and bringing Lucas in. I can’t get the Szabo comment to come up now and don’t remember what I said.
There are certainly a lot of axes to grind about Lincoln.
November 26th, 2012 | 2:54 pm
“They got axes to grind and don’t want to seriously think about Lincoln or the film.”
Oh, I dunno, Carl. I think many of those commentors are thinking “seriously” about Mr. Lincoln and the legality, morality, and results of his actions. Interesting reading, indeed.
November 26th, 2012 | 3:25 pm
In regards to number 6, this was addressed in the film. In January 1865 the war was clearly coming to an end. Though the Republicans would have held a larger majority in the House in March, the close proximity to peace could cause conservative Republicans to balk at at passing the 13th Amendment.
November 26th, 2012 | 9:50 pm
I said this below in a previous post and thread, but the greatest historical inaccuracy/omission in the movie concerning the 13th amendment was the following: the main focus of the debate in the 38th Congress was over the very constitutionality of the amendment. That was totally missing from the movie. Michael Zuckert has a very good article on this focal point, “Completing the Constitution: The Thirteenth Amendment”, in Constitutional Commentary, v. 4, pp. 259 – 283. I, too, was ignorant of the closeness of the vote; it certainly is not mentioned in Kelly/Harbison/Belz, The American Constitution, although I suspect that Herman Belz discusses it in his separate treatment of the topic, A New Birth of Freedom.
November 27th, 2012 | 6:20 am
I think that is right Paul Seaton. It depends if you take Ashley’s side or not. (I am thinking of this in terms of Ohio History). Short comment version:
Ashley vs. Corwin. Previous to the outbreak of the Civil War, Ashley in Ohio had lost to Corwin and Ohio had declared in part as positioning for negotiation that the free soil branch of the republican party (namely Ashley) would be kept under control. The Corwin ammendment which Ohio passed…if it had been ratified would have made the 13th ammendment unconstitutional.
Corwin and Ashley didn’t like each other, and the failure in negotiation ruined Corwin…and swung the pendulum to the free soil pro-13th amendment wing lead by Ashley. Corwin and some of the interests he represented argued that since 3 states had passed the ammendment and since Ohio was one of them, Ashley representing Ohio could not put forward the 13th(at the time the Corwin Act was submited to the states without a deadline….so in a sense it could still have been ratified at the point when the 13th was under discussion….and possibly still today (did you know that Mississippi still hasn’t ratified the 13th…The South Rising again and folks like Cheeks causing problems for the republican brand just needs Miss to ratify the Corwin act!) Of course any lawyer today would know that the most important thing to do is have a deadline/cut off the chain of proximate cause/regulate History…but apparently Corwin didn’t want to put a deadline on it..(for fear that failure to meet such a deadline would have meant war?!)
Corwin in part blaming the free soil wing of the republican party for its rhetoric…never really forgave Ashley, for the breakdown in negotiations (avoiding the Civil War was supposed to be his key accomplishment…and Spielberg should have made a movie about the greatness of Corwin!) But Alas War came…in part because of Ashley’s big free soil mouth! (not exactly the way Lincoln puts it in the second inaugural)
So basically I think the movie seems accurate on the 13th in so far as the Ashley side of the Republican party was concerned! (really the unconstitutionality was basically caused by Corwin’s own procedural gaffe.) I don’t actually think a procedural error in a poorly written quasi- ammendment (whose original intent was as a negotiation ploy to avert war can stop the 13th!)… On the other hand the 13th itself is rather moot mechanically…which is why: “It’s just one of those episodes that for whatever reason, historians have not paid much attention to” (other than Ohio Legal Historians!…)
I just happened to take a class from a person who might be one of the few experts on it. Prof. Melhorn( Senior partner at Marshall&Melhorn…an old school Harvard educated lawyer whose exclusive hobby is research into ohio legal history.)
November 27th, 2012 | 9:32 am
Lewis, your above isn’t bad, but reallly rambles and is hard to follow. You should expand it and make it intelligible.
Re: “The South Rising again and folks like Cheeks causing problems for the republican …” Really? Dude, I’m here as a defender of the olde republicanism which is, as far as I can tell, about the only form of gummint that works for a virtuous people. I will grant you I am mightily opposed to this absurd Rinoism/commie-Dem Light that so sadly prevails here.
Remember, my progressivist friend, the flaws of any republic can be corrected, but the machinations of the progressivist state always derail into corruption and evil.
November 27th, 2012 | 9:36 am
BTW, when are one of our bloggers going to do a piece on the 14th Amendment? You know the one ratified in the occupied states under threat of the bayonet.
November 27th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
John, I’m too busy this week to dip into the Corwin thing, but any part of the U.S. Constitution, even the existence of three branches, can be struck out or changed by amendment, with the one and only remaining exception listed in article V, and likewise, anything under the sun can be added to the Constitution via amendment. There cannot be the slightest question of the “constitutionality of an U.S. amendment” if it has been written so as to strike out potentially conflicting language elsewhere in the Constitution, or written so make exceptions in its case. So there is nothing, let alone a court case in Ohio, that could have the made 13th amendment unconstitutional, so long as it was ratified by correct process. (Robert’s complaint of course is about the process.)
I insist on stressing this point, because it highlights the error of a vague but widespread current belief in judicial supremacy.
November 27th, 2012 | 2:13 pm
[...] LINCOLN: It’s Awesome – Carl Scott, PoMoCon [...]
November 27th, 2012 | 3:39 pm
Carl, would say the purpose of the Constitution, its intent, is to describe, exactly the many LIMITATIONS of the central gummint?
And, you’re correct about the judiciary and its intended limitations.
Looking forward to your comments on the 14th Amendment. And, that’s the one Spielberg should have covered.
November 27th, 2012 | 4:13 pm
Surely, my dear friend, you jest when you praise such a dreadful film, not great in every way as you imagine, but terrible in every way. Acting, scripting, photography, music and directing are all equally puerile.
I am continually amazed that some well-intentioned folks cannot see through the treacle dished out by the ham-fisted Mr Spielberg, whose films indicate a mentality on the Junior High level. Could I humbly suggest an antidote to such poor filmmaking? Get yourself a copy of, say, David Lean’s 1948 version of OLIVER TWIST. There will you see brilliance and artistry in every frame, every moment, every department.
It is long past time to rediscover what has been lost to us in the field of cinema.
November 27th, 2012 | 9:22 pm
Say more on the Lincoln film, Dan.
I do love all the David Lean films I’ve seen (despite the bad writing and acting for the K. Hepburn character in that Venice one), but for some reason haven’t seen the Oliver Twist one. I will say outright that his Great Expectations (1946) is easily a superior film to Lincoln, and is a must-see for all. Then of course there’s Zhivago, Lawrence, and his late-life triumph A Passage to India.
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