Lin­coln

Steven Spielberg’s most vital films (often his most com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful) smug­gle thorny ele­ments into seem­ing­ly innocu­ous shells: ET and Close Encoun­ters Of The Third Kind anatomise the insta­bil­i­ty of the nuclear fam­i­ly so harsh­ly it hurts. Like Capra, redemp­tion only comes when the pain is unbearable.

His most effec­tive recent films – AI, Minor­i­ty Report and War Of The Worlds – cut deeply when it’s time to depict strong neg­a­tive emo­tions (pan­ic, fear, aban­don­ment, inex­plic­a­ble destruc­tion), then col­lapse in the face of a hap­py end­ing. AI’s dar­ing­ly straight­faced ​‘hap­py end­ing’, a nihilis­tic gut­punch, marks the one instance that a Spiel­berg finale, com­plete with soar­ing John Williams score, can’t be tak­en at face val­ue. In short: Spiel­berg is a stag­ger­ing­ly gift­ed tech­ni­cian who fal­ters when it’s time to be earnest.

More than a decade in devel­op­ment, Spielberg’s Lin­coln is com­plex and sen­si­tive on the sub­ject of polit­i­cal ends ver­sus means, in spe­cif­ic rela­tion to the pas­sage of the 13^th Amend­ment out­law­ing slav­ery in the Unit­ed States. His star is Daniel Day-Lewis, whose Abra­ham Lin­coln is one of the arch method man’s most uncom­mand­ing arche­types. He tells ram­bling his­tor­i­cal anec­dotes to slow the pulse of a room to a tem­po he can control.

In Lin­coln, he’s unflinch­ing in depict­ing the moral com­pro­mis­es that make change pos­si­ble. The moral short­cuts neces­si­tat­ed by the exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive branch­es of the US Gov­ern­ment are – via Tony Kushner’s screen­play – pre­sent­ed unblink­ing­ly. Of sev­er­al mono­logues, the most spell­bind­ing is the one in which Lin­coln artic­u­lates the legal grey areas he exploit­ed to pre­serve the Union, apply­ing a lawyer’s mind to a moral task that can’t be legal­ly accomplished.

This Lin­coln is will­ing to organ­ise the dubi­ous vote-by-vote per­sua­sion of oppos­ing Democ­rats nec­es­sary to rat­i­fy the 13^th Amend­ment, promis­ing them post-leg­isla­tive jobs if nec­es­sary. As severe abo­li­tion­ist Thad­deus Stevens, Tom­my Lee Jones is the scourge of prag­ma­tism. Just as Day-Lewis pre­dictably and flaw­less­ly dis­ap­pears into his part, Jones assim­i­lates his: his panoply of bark­ing out­rage and bale­ful glares has rarely been bet­ter served.

In a key moment, Stevens is per­suad­ed to quell his right­eous acri­mo­ny to the expe­di­ent end of pass­ing the 13^th Amend­ment by deny­ing that he seeks full equal­i­ty for black Amer­i­cans, only legal equal­i­ty. It’s a riv­et­ing capit­u­la­tion, ren­dered tone-deaf when Stevens strides off the floor of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with John Williams’ score – more rarely heard than usu­al but still always unwel­come – cheer­ing him with a warm dose of wood­wind sen­ti­ment, trans­form­ing a moment of nec­es­sary eth­i­cal com­pro­mise into unam­bigu­ous applause.

Such audio sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty is often, thank­ful­ly, avoid­ed in one of Spielberg’s most styl­is­ti­cal­ly tamped-down films. Auteur self-asser­tion pri­mar­i­ly comes in the heavy shades of gauzy gold, bleak grey and stark white that make up the palette. Absent fathers, a per­ma­nent motif in Spielberg’s work, have died down a bit in recent years, though it’s prob­a­bly worth not­ing that Lincoln’s assas­si­na­tion is depict­ed through his youngest son’s eyes – the loss of the father of the nation is depict­ed fore­most as a fil­ial one.

Infe­lic­i­ties include – pre­dictably, giv­en Amis­tad – a patro­n­is­ing take on race, with Lincoln’s grate­ful manser­vant watch­ing with a pre­scient lump in his throat as the pres­i­dent leaves for his fatal date at Ford’s The­atre. Sal­ly Field’s turn as Mary Todd Lin­coln is high­ly regret­table; view­ers with no idea of her doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of depres­sive behav­iour (some­times retroac­tive­ly inter­pret­ed as bipo­lar dis­or­der) will sim­ply take her shrilling as ful­fill­ing the usu­al oblig­a­tion of cin­e­mat­ic wives towards hus­bands on big­ger-than-them­selves missions.

View­er patience may erode entire­ly when she protests Abraham’s deci­sion to let son Robert (Joseph Gor­don-Levitt) enlist in the Union Army, risk­ing his entrance into com­bat before the Amendment’s pas­sage can ensure the fighting’s end. ​“Since you are send­ing our son to war, woe to you if you fail to pass the Amend­ment,” she hiss­es. If Spielberg’s goal is to show the pres­sures – rea­son­able and unrea­son­able – that Lin­coln bal­anced, his exe­cu­tion falters.

It’s emi­nent­ly watch­able, but Lincoln’s larg­er pur­pose and rel­e­vance for Now remains elu­sive. Released against the back­drop of a con­tentious elec­tion in which the for­mer par­ty of Lin­coln (the Repub­li­cans) relied heav­i­ly on racist dog-whis­tle cues to ral­ly the faith­ful, dia­logue about white peo­ple hav­ing lost their moral com­pass sug­gests one reason.

Anoth­er odd cue comes towards the end, when Lin­coln mus­es about his post-polit­i­cal-life wish to vis­it Jerusalem, a his­tor­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed urge that’s nonethe­less an odd choice to fore­ground. Kush­n­er and Spielberg’s sole pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion was on Munich, which expressed both of their pub­licly not­ed ambiva­lence about Israel’s puni­tive mea­sures regard­ing the Palestinians.

Even more sug­ges­tive­ly, Lin­coln ends with the president’s sec­ond inau­gur­al address – specif­i­cal­ly, its last line, call­ing for ​“a last­ing peace, among our­selves, and all nations.” Labelling this a plea for a two-state solu­tion is a def­i­nite stretch, but a call for inter­na­tion­al prag­mat­ic nego­ti­a­tion might be this Lincoln’s strongest rea­son to exist.