lincoln movie summary 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 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.

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

Sally Field as Mary Todd

David Strathairn as Seward

Tommy Lee Jones as Stevens

Directed by

Steven Spielberg
Tony Kushner

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Lincoln Movie Reflection

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As the Civil War rages on, U.S President Abraham Lincoln struggles with continuing carnage on the battlefield as he fights with many inside his own cabinet on his decision to emancipate the slaves.
In 1865, as the American Civil War winds inexorably toward conclusion, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln endeavors to achieve passage of the landmark constitutional amendment which will forever ban slavery from the United States. However, his task is a race against time, for peace may come at any time, and if it comes before the amendment is passed, the returning southern states will stop it before it can become law. Lincoln must, by almost any means possible, obtain enough votes from a recalcitrant Congress before peace arrives and it is too late. Yet the president is torn, as an early peace would save thousands of lives. As the nation confronts its conscience over the freedom of its entire population, Lincoln faces his own crisis of conscience -- end slavery or end the war. — Jim Beaver <[email protected]>
It's January, 1865, and US President Abraham Lincoln has just started his second term in office as an immensely popular leader, especially among his supporters, because of his down home attitude. However, the country is in turmoil with the Civil War entering its fourth year and having taken the lives of many a soldier on both sides. Lincoln believes that passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution - which would abolish slavery - would most importantly achieve something in which he believes to his core, but also end the war as slavery is a large part of the raison d'etre for it. The Amendment has already passed in the Senate, and is scheduled for vote in the House of Representatives at the end of the month. While he is assured of yes votes from his fellow Republicans, he and his team have to work hard behind the scenes to assure enough yes votes from Democrats, which may require some compromise in other areas. But other factors may also come into play on the vote, such as the Confederate forces in the war issuing their own compromise to end the war but keep slavery. Meanwhile, Lincoln also deals with his oft supportive but oft tumultuous relationship with wife Mary Todd Lincoln, and their latest possible rift in oldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln's want to leave law school to enlist. — Huggo
With the nation embroiled in still another year with the high death count of Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln brings the full measure of his passion, humanity and political skill to what would become his defining legacy: to end the war and permanently abolish slavery through the 13th Amendment. Having great courage, acumen and moral fortitude, Lincoln pushes forward to compel the nation, and those in government who oppose him, to aim toward a greater good for all mankind. — Jwelch5742
January 1865. Four years into the destructive American Civil War and with the nation divided by conflict, newly re-elected US President Abraham Lincoln sought a way to end the bloodshed. More than anything, the influential politician wanted to pass the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery, restore peace, and reunite the country. As the war drew to a close, Lincoln enlisted the help of Secretary of State William H. Seward to secure Democratic support and find twenty House Democrats to vote for the bill to outlaw slavery. With unwavering dedication and courage, Abraham Lincoln inspired a pivotal decision that changed the course of history. — Nick Riganas
Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) recounts President Abraham Lincoln's efforts, during January 1865, to obtain passage for the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the United States House of Representatives, which would formally abolish slavery in the country. Expecting the Civil War to end within a month but concerned that his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation may be discarded by the courts once the war has concluded and the 13th Amendment defeated by the returning slave states, Lincoln feels it is imperative to pass the amendment by the end of January, thus removing any possibility that slaves who have already been freed may be re-enslaved. The Radical Republicans fear the amendment will merely be defeated by some who wish to delay its passage; the support of the amendment by Republicans in the border states is not yet assured either, since they prioritize the issue of ending the war. Even if all of them are ultimately brought on board, the amendment will still require the support of several Democratic congressmen if it is to pass. With dozens of Democrats having just become lame ducks after losing their re-election campaigns in the fall of 1864, some of Lincoln's advisers believe that he should wait until the new Republican-heavy Congress is seated, presumably giving the amendment an easier road to passage. Lincoln, however, remains adamant about having the amendment in place and the issue of slavery settled before the war is concluded and the southern states readmitted into the Union. Lincoln's hopes for passage of the amendment rely upon the support of the Republican Party founder Francis Preston Blair, the only one whose influence can ensure that all members of the western and border state conservative Republican faction will back the amendment. With Union victory in the Civil War seeming highly likely and greatly anticipated, but not yet a fully accomplished fact, Blair is keen to end the hostilities as soon as possible. Therefore, in return for his support, Blair insists that Lincoln allow him to immediately engage the Confederate government in peace negotiations. This is a complication to Lincoln's amendment efforts since he knows that a significant portion of the support, he has garnered for the amendment is from the Radical Republican faction for whom a negotiated peace that leaves slavery intact is anathema. If there seems to be a realistic possibility of ending the war even without guaranteeing the end of slavery, the needed support for the amendment from the more conservative wing (which does not favor abolition) will certainly fall away. Unable to proceed without Blair's support, however, Lincoln reluctantly authorizes Blair's mission. In the meantime, Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward (Stephen Henderson) work on the issue of securing the necessary Democratic votes for the amendment. Lincoln suggests that they concentrate on the lame duck Democrats, as they have already lost re-election and thus will feel free to vote as they please, rather than having to worry about how their vote will affect a future re-election campaign. Since those members also will soon be in need of employment and Lincoln will have many federal jobs to fill as he begins his second term, he sees this as a tool he can use to his advantage. Though Lincoln and Seward are unwilling to offer direct monetary bribes to the Democrats, they authorize agents to quietly go about contacting Democratic congressmen with offers of federal jobs in exchange for their voting in favor of the amendment. With Confederate envoys ready to meet with Lincoln, he instructs them to be kept out of Washington, as the amendment approaches a vote on the House floor. At the moment of truth, Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy lee Jones) decides to moderate his statements about racial equality to help the amendment's chances of passage. A rumor circulates that there are Confederate representatives in Washington ready to discuss peace, prompting both Democrats and conservative Republicans to advocate postponing the vote on the amendment. Lincoln explicitly denies that such envoys are in or will be in the city - technically a truthful statement, since he had ordered them to be kept away - and the vote proceeds, narrowly passing by a margin of two votes. When Lincoln subsequently meets with the Confederates, he tells them that slavery cannot be restored as the North is united for ratification of the amendment, and that several of the southern states' reconstructed legislatures would also vote to ratify. After the amendment's passage, the film's narrative shifts forward two months, portraying Lincoln's visit to the battlefield at Petersburg, Virginia, where he exchanges a few words with General Grant. Shortly thereafter, Grant receives General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. On the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln is in a meeting with members of his cabinet, discussing possible future measures to enfranchise blacks, when he is reminded that Mrs. Lincoln is waiting to take them to their evening at Ford's Theatre. That night, while Tad Lincoln is viewing Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp at Grover's Theater, a man announces that the President has been shot. The next morning his physician pronounces him dead. The film concludes with a flashback to Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address.

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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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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.

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

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

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

November 15, 2012 @ 10:32 pm Sparling

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

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.

November 16, 2012 @ 6:00 pm Baconator

Same could be said for Spielberg.

November 15, 2012 @ 11:26 pm Grasshopper

SPOILER ALERT: Lincoln gets shot and dies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

November 16, 2012 @ 2:43 pm Ramses

Movie made me respect Lincoln all the more.

November 16, 2012 @ 9:06 pm Huff

Hear, hear!

November 18, 2012 @ 6:41 pm Eve

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

November 23, 2012 @ 7:13 am wrathofthetitans

nice biography movie,great watch.

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A President Engaged in a Great Civil War

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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.

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

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.

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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.

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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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Movie Interviews

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

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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Six Footnotes to the Greatness of “Lincoln”

Imagining the Unimaginable

Six Footnotes to the Greatness of “Lincoln”

William Herndon, who was Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield, and who eventually collaborated on a biography of him, wrote as follows: “For fifty years God rolled Abraham Lincoln through his fiery furnace. He did it to try Abraham and to purify him for his purposes. This made Mr. Lincoln humble, tender, forbearing, sympathetic to suffering, kind, sensitive, tolerant; broadening, deepening and widening his whole nature; making him the noblest and loveliest character since Jesus Christ…I believe that Lincoln was God’s chosen one.”

Try making a movie with that playing in your head. Herndon’s was not an uncommon way of speaking about Lincoln—not then, not now. The emphasis on Lincoln’s goodness, his forbearance, his attributes both human and semi-divine, his “purified” character, which combined elements of the Old and New Testaments—well, how can you portray such a being as a political actor, a President , without falling into dreadful piety and sentiment, or sheer boringness? John Ford’s very fine “Young Mr. Lincoln,” from 1939, is about Lincoln’s youth; it offers an intimation of greatness—at the end, Lincoln walks “up the road a piece” to confront his future. But the mature Lincoln is almost unimaginable; he’s myth and shadow, a figure fogged by veneration, by love mixed with incomprehension.

Steven Spielberg began by hiring the best playwright in the country. According to the press notes for the film, Tony Kushner, immersing himself in the politics and language of the period, delivered a five-hundred page script, which was unfilmable except as a TV mini-series. At some point, when Kushner was in his car, Spielberg called, and said something like, “The best part of your script is the eighty pages devoted to passing the Thirteenth Amendment. Let’s make the whole movie about that.”

In other words, they did not make a bio-pic; they made a movie about a political actor at a specific time of crisis: January, 1865, when the war was coming to an end, and Lincoln wanted to push through the House of Representatives the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional. (The earlier Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln figured, was vulnerable and insufficient. See note five below to hear why.) Spielberg and Kushner placed their hero, then, in the middle of political struggle for the soul of the country. All the issues of the war, were encapsulated in that moment, but the movie, despite many moments one can only call noble, is not some elevated wheeze. On the contrary, “Lincoln”—I can’t believe I’m writing these words—is a legislative thriller. It’s an exciting, suspenseful movie about cajolery, persuasion, ideology. It’s a great movie about…counting votes. And into this framework, the filmmakers folded a portrait of an unhappy, torn-apart family, a kind of metaphor for the nation caught up in civil war.

As a second way of dispelling piety, Spielberg, Kushner, and Daniel Day-Lewis emphasized the sheer oddity of Lincoln’s physical presence. Lincoln was six feet four, an enormous height in the eighteen-sixties. Daniel Day-Lewis is a lanky six-two, now enlarged by a stove-pipe hat, an absurd columnar fixture. At times, seen from a distance, Lincoln looks like a drawn stick figure, perpendicular, black-suited, with an awkward tuft of beard rimming his jaw—the very opposite of power’s usual streamlined appearance. Julius Caesar, as much as any sleek modern commander, would die before seeming so awkward. Seen up close, Day-Lewis’s body appears composed of broad planks of wood held together by hinges at the waist, at the knee, at the neck. He’s stiff, uncomfortable, creaky. His walk (and this is accurate) is an unsteady, bent-shouldered trudge. Lincoln’s voice, famously, was high and piercing. Day-Lewis’s voice is very different, but he mastered Lincoln’s tenor without strain, and is able to work it for humor, for irony, for long bouts of story-telling, and for rare bouts of anger.

As Day-Lewis plays him, Lincoln recedes into himself; he seems to be not quite paying attention—a trick he uses to draw people out. He’s actually the world’s greatest listener. But when he emerges from his seeming pre-occupation, he rarely answers in the way the person before him wants him to answer. He tells a story, or makes a joke, or quotes “Hamlet.” He’s ruminative and indirect, vaguely mocking; he makes his point by fable and analogy, which is something his listeners are not always swift enough to understand.

When he’s direct—when he needs to be direct—he becomes overwhelmingly precise, driving, eloquent; really, almost terrifying. In two key scenes with his cabinet, arguing for the passage of the amendment, Day-Lewis raises his big hands and slaps them down hard on a table. In the first scene, Lincoln performs an elaborate explanation of the constitutional issues behind his drive for the amendment. The procession of arguments comes so rapidly, and with such consecutive power, that it’s hard to keep up with them. I’ve never heard anything so densely argued in a Hollywood movie. In the second, as the vote draws near, and Lincoln and his allies are falling two votes short, he tells them that this is the moment—the moment. They must act for all eternity. Slavery must be outlawed forever. In a rage, Day-Lewis stands up, talking of his “awesome power,” and demands that the men get him the last two votes. It’s Lincoln’s only moment of majesty in office, and it leaves you shaken. Any thought of Jesus disappears. This is an Old Testament figure, wrathful and demanding.

Words Above All

One of Spielberg’s greatest accomplishments was trusting Tony Kushner. What else did politicians have in the eighteen-sixties—so he must have reasoned—but words? Yes, they had literature, the Bible, and newspapers, but if a politician couldn’t speak on his feet, he had trouble getting very far. Kushner himself realized that nineteenth-century politics was essentially theatrical. He elevated the back-and-forth interplay of meetings and debate into eloquence, tirade, insult, rodomontade—the public barb, richly delivered, the swelling line of moral indignation. The inflation feels right: it was the great moment of moral passion in the country’s history. The literary historian Daniel Aaron once wrote a book (“The Unwritten War”) saying that the Civil War had produced very little literature of importance, but the literature of the period, surely, was spoken. In Kushner’s version, at any rate, the range of speech is almost Shakespearian.

The speech includes the rather formal diction of William Seward (David Strathairn), Lincoln’s rival for the 1860 nomination, who became his Secretary of State and intimate political partner, and who admonishes Lincoln when he thinks he’s wrong but serves, in the end, as his most effective instrument. There are the anguished scruples of the fence-sitters who hate slavery but hate equality, too; the sulfurous sarcasm of Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones, having a ball), a leading abolitionist and radical Republican (which meant something very different in those days), who singes the flab of moral weakness in the Democrats when they refuse to support the amendment. There is the tobacco-and-whiskey vernacular of Seward’s three greasy but intelligent operatives (James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson). These three sports seem to have stepped out of a Mark Twain novel; they prove invaluable in rounding up (i.e., bribing with job offers) the morally fallible Democrats.

Lincoln meets the three adroit hacks and immediately understands them. He knows this side of politics—the poltroons, the fixers, the back-room boys. He came up through them and triumphed over them in Illinois. Part of his genius is that he is capable of going high and low, moving from eloquence to easy banter and profane jokes. He remains saturated in his boyhood reading—Shakespeare, the Bible, Euclid’s maxims—which he relies on as a base of understanding and principle; also as a way of steering through the twists and turns of a politician’s necessary manipulations. As Kushner fashions Lincoln, his love of literature is inseparable from his comprehension of how to move the nation—and also how to appeal to many kinds of men.

Somber, Sober, Sure-handed

What made commercial projects like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” so enjoyable was the flamboyant eccentricity of Spielberg’s visual imagination—especially his imagination of action, which was fresh, free-wheeling, surprising. But “Lincoln” avoids flamboyance. Most of it is very somber. Lincoln’s office and the cabinet room are small and dark. The city of Washington is smoky and gray, as if the filth of battle had drifted over the city. The only brilliant light is at the windows: Many of the most important indoor scenes are shot in silhouette, with just the smallest amount of fill (equal to a candle or a lantern) coming from the foreground. The movie begins with a vicious hand-to-hand combat between Southern white and Northern black soldiers, but that’s it—there are no other battle scenes. The war is nearly over, and everyone is sick of it; the tone of the movie is subdued, sorrowful, exhausted. Near the end, Lincoln in his black coat and stovepipe, positioned at the head of a column of Union officers, rides on horseback through Petersburg battlefield. Around him lie hundreds of bodies in the gray muck. It is as affecting and beautiful a sequence as any that Spielberg has ever conceived—a shaft of national tragedy that time will never heal; the wound, in this image, still feels fresh. Seeing a Union corpse, Lincoln raises his hat.

In the scenes of debate in the House of Representatives, Spielberg sweeps the camera across the room, moves in for close-ups at climactic moments. The camera style is more rhetorical. The debates, as it turns out, are enormously entertaining—combative and grandiloquent, more like the fierce jocular roughhouse of the British Commons than the stiff, dry, functional routine of today’s Congress. Tommy Lee Jones, pouring out contempt in his rapid-fire way, dominates the legislative scenes, though Michael Stuhlbarg, as Representative George Yeaman, from Kentucky, one of the fence-sitters, has perhaps the most beautiful moment of moral clarity in the movie, leading to an ecstatic “Aye! Aye!” as he puts the vote over the top. I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed in that scene.

At Last, Spielberg Discovers a Woman

Spielberg did something potentially dangerous but very shrewd with Sally Field. He took what has always been irritating about Field—her neediness, her beseeching, pain-in-the neck demand—and enlarged it (with Kushner’s help) into a major portrait of a seriously unhappy woman. Mary Todd Lincoln was not an easy person to begin with, and, by 1865, two of her four sons were already dead. She was depressive, she had migraines, and she hated the White House. Field’s scenes with Day-Lewis are surprising in their ferocity. At one point, as Mary accuses Lincoln of not grieving over their son Willie, who had died in 1862 of typhoid fever, Day-Lewis raises his arms and his voice, and comes close to slugging her. Suddenly, we’re pitched into a Eugene O’Neill play. Spielberg, putting it mildly, has never been much interested in women in his movies, but here, at last, he has made a full portrait of a woman exercising her power in the only way she can. Mary, who initially opposes the amendment, threatens Lincoln, in a turn-around, with making his life miserable if he doesn’t get it passed, and Field milks the moment for every ounce of perverse energy, expressing the will to dominate even in a subordinate position. She’s not likable, but it’s a great performance.

The Situation

As I said, none of the following will destroy the pleasure of the movie, but it might be useful to hear it before you see “Lincoln.” The film dramatizes a political tangle that is more complex than anything I can think of in American cinema.

The Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves—that is, taking them away from the South as property—came in 1863, a year and a half in the past. But, as Lincoln explains in the first cabinet scene, he’s not sure the Supreme Court will uphold the War Powers Act; the proclamation made under the act could be abrogated. The South is falling apart, close to surrender, and the Southern states, defeated, and reëntering the Congress—as Lincoln had always wanted—will never ratify the amendment. After the war, they could reclaim their slaves as property. He wants the amendment to pass before the surrender. The above is a bald summary. Lincoln’s actual explanation, which is frankly opportunistic yet subtle, is far more detailed—a stunning example of principle and power fitting into a legal framework that will make a President’s intentions last as something more than moral sentiment.

Lincoln has the entire Republican vote on his side, though, in the House of Representatives, the support is divided into two groups. There are the radical Republicans led by the sulfurous abolitionist Stevens, who wants complete equality for the Negro and also the South punished and reduced to poverty. And there are the conservative Republicans, led by a prominent civilian, Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), who founded the party as an abolitionist organization but wants something less than full equality for Negroes. Blair goes on a mission to Richmond, the capitol of the Confederacy, to solicit a peace offer, which Lincoln wants—but not quite yet.

The Telegram to Obama

The movie is, among other things, a message to the President: it is not enough to make fine and noble speeches. In democratic politics, you have to get tough and dirty. You have to use patronage, personal persuasion, threats, whatever is at your command. Lincoln made it possible for you to be President, and now—in order to get policies, which you know are just, through the Congress—you have to imitate the crafty and manipulative things he did. End of message.

“Momentous” is a strange word to use about any movie. The medium is usually at its best when it’s casually intense, slangy rather than grand. Who would describe “Rules of the Game” or the “The Godfather” as momentous? Or “The Maltese Falcon” or “Chinatown” or “The Social Network”? Great movies all, but they stick to their own peculiar intrigues and suggest larger meanings only through implication—that’s the wise strategy, as any shrewd producer would tell you. But in “Lincoln,” Spielberg and Kushner marched straight down the center of national memory, the moment of glory and anguish, and they got it right.

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