More on "Lincoln"

An interesting article from Kate Masur, writing for the New York Times:

Even more unsettling is the brief cameo of Lydia Smith (played by S. Epatha Merkerson), housekeeper and supposed lover of the Pennsylvania congressman and Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Stevens’s relationship with his “mulatto” housekeeper is the subject of notoriously racist scenes in D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.” Though Mr. Spielberg’s film looks upon the pair with far more sympathy, the sudden revelation of their relationship — Stevens literally hands the official copy of the 13th Amendment to Smith, before the two head into bed together — reveals, once again, the film’s determination to see emancipation as a gift from white people to black people, not as a social transformation in which African-Americans themselves played a role.

Masur's argues that, beyond the film's beautiful opening scene, the African Americans in "Lincoln" do not have a material influence on the outcome of the film. She doesn't mean that the characters themselves are passive, because in several instances African American characters speak out about their experiences. She means that the film does not show African American characters having a direct influence on Lincoln's (or any other politicians') thinking about slavery or the 13th amendment.

I would quibble with this a little bit, because the opening scene, in which a black soldier confronts Lincoln about equal pay and equal rights, frames the rest of the film. But certainly "Lincoln" could have done better showing how escaped slaves worked and argued for their own freedom.

A few more thoughts on "Lincoln"

As I said in my review the other day, I really liked the movie. This isn't to say I thought it was a perfect history. But it's important to consider the function of a movie like "Lincoln" before castigating it for playing somewhat fast and loose with the historical record. "Lincoln" tells a great story that expands the cultural conversation about Lincoln and the "fate of human dignity." I would argue that, in the context of historical fiction, fidelity to the general bent of history and its lessons is much more important than slavish dedication to dates and facts. Obviously that sort of thinking has produced works very controversial films, as different as "The Birth of a Nation" and "Glory." But every movie should be judged on its own merits, and I think "Lincoln" passes the smell test. Anyway. A few gripes follow:

--Lincoln felt a little too modern. His views on racial equality are left pretty unspecific, which leaves us as viewers to project our own opinions onto him. This makes him seem much more racially progressive than he was. There's one borderline cringe-worthy scene in which Lincoln asks Elizabeth Keckley (Mary's servant and a former slave) about what "her people" will do once they are free. But other than this Lincoln is left as something of a cipher, as far as his opinions on true equality for blacks and whites.

--The scenes in which Lincoln interacts with Mary or Robert are well done, and include important characterizing moments for Lincoln, but don't come to much plot-wise. I should mention, also, that Mary isn't treated very well. She gets one chance to talk crap at Thaddeus Stephens, but comes off as petty more than empowered.

--There seem to be significant problems with the timeline, and some sleight of hand with the historical sequence of events to ratchet up tension. The peace commissioners from Richmond, who in the movie seem to languish for a long stretch at City Point and Hampton Roads, were not even named by Jefferson Davis until January 28, and did not cross federal lines until January 30, just one day before the 13th amendment came to a vote.

--The Hampton Roads conference, with the aforementioned confederate peace commissioners, has been misrepresented. The fundamental difference between Lincoln and the confederates, in the film, is the 13th amendment. But the conversations were doomed from the beginning--the confederates were not interested in peace without independence. Lincoln, of course, demanded reunion.

--There was an explicit mention of Lincoln's interactions with manacled slaves on a flatboat trip he took as a young man to New Orleans. In the context of the film, the story grounds Lincoln's anti-slavery sentiment and helps explain why he regards slavery as evil. But the story is apocryphal. Lincoln did ride to New Orleans as a young man, though there is no reliable documentation as to what interactions with slaves, if any, he had there. The inclusion of this story is more a case of poetic license, though.

A "Lincoln" Review

"We must consider what will become of colored folk," shouts Michael Stuhlbarg as George Yeaman, stalking the floor of the House of Representatives in a scene from "Lincoln," Stephen Spielberg's amazing new film. For Yeaman, speaking about the upcoming vote on the 13th amendment to abolish slavery, the question is straightforward: the United States cannot afford to end slavery, because it is not ready to see freedmen as equals. White people will not stand for freedmen who can vote, or who can marry their daughters.

George Yeaman

As Yeaman speaks conservatives nearly froth at the mouth, standing from their seats and crying their indignation each time he names another milestone of black equality on the slippery slope lurking beyond the 13th amendment. The vitriol is shocking--a reminder that slavery remained divisive even within the Union as the Civil War raged in southern territory.

Yet the response from republicans to this bald racism, this racial fear-mongering, is equally shocking. Though Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the radical Republican faction in the House and played by Tommy Lee Jones, might believe the slaves should be freed and granted full political and social equality, he sees no traitors among the pro-slavery faction of his cohort. Stevens dishes out some spectacular name-calling, but it's all in good fun, and the message is clear: slavery remains a political issue, a matter to be debated within and decided by the political institutions of the United States. 

The tone is set: tempers flare, unscrupulous characters abound, ends justify the means, and abolition hangs in the balance.

Into this fray steps Abraham Lincoln. A magnificent, funny, charismatic Lincoln, a Lincoln capable of stopping the lives of a hundred indispensable people long enough to tell a poop joke. This is a Lincoln not conflicted about slavery, or about the 13th amendment--slavery is evil, and should be abolished--but conflicted in other ways. Conflicted about Mary Lincoln, whom he interacts with with something approaching tolerance. Conflicted about his son Robert, who wants to join the army.

In this way Lincoln becomes someone we recognize. A man capable of greatness, beset by the difficulties of his time and all times: a congress of ideologues; an unhappy home. Through it all he's human, in the way we expect our heroes to be. He's smart, but, more important, he's wise. He bears the weight of the horror and death of war, but remains resolved to end the conflict in such a way that that horror will not have been in vain. He is the most important person in any room. He loves his children, and his wife less. This is a Lincoln who, in true post-modern fashion, anticipates his loudest, most persistent critics, deconstructing his own legacy of illegal actions. In the next breath he explains this lawlessness away by claiming that the people, who re-elected him, have validated his actions de facto. Such a scene, in which I found myself nodding along with Lincoln's logic, is the bizzaro world twin of the moment in "Frost/Nixon" in which a clammy Frank Langella, as Nixon, bellows, "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal."

I can imagine that, with a lesser actor than Daniel Day-Lewis, or with a lesser screenplay, the entire movie might have fallen apart. A poop joke? While the telegraph office waits on pins and needles for news from the assault on Wilmington harbor? Somehow, it works: the moment seems appropriate because Day-Lewis's face, haggard and haunted, reminds us that he has never, not for an instant, forgotten the sacrifices of his soldiers. Day-Lewis's Lincoln is practically tactile, inviting us to admire the misplaced hairs sticking from his grey beard, or to trace the deep creases in his face as his mouth and eyes creep into a sly smile. Spielberg wants us to see Lincoln as a man, imperfect as anyone else, instead of the idol he's become. The depiction feels right. It's aided by the crisp screenplay, which dispenses enough comic relief to lighten a film that might otherwise have smothered in the smoky seriousness of the wood-paneled rooms where the fate of the 13th amendment was decided. 

The movie has minor characters galore, all of whom seem to contribute memorable moments. The strongest of these is Tommy Lee Jones's Thaddeus Stevens. His limp becomes the physical metaphor for his compromised principles as he publicly denies his more radical views to protect the passage of the 13th amendment. Yet the subtext is clear: he's limping, but still walking. He, and the country, can move forward. One of the final scenes of the movie shows him presenting a copy of the just-passed amendment to his common law wife, the mixed-race Lydia Hamilton Smith. This is what progress looks like.

"Lincoln" works hard not to fall into the trap of equating the end of slavery to equality for freedmen, but the emotional importance of its climax rests partially upon that assumption. As viewers, the passage of the 13th amendment at the end of the film is our payoff. All of Lincoln's work, and all of his belief in the equality of man, has come here to fruition. This, of course, is not quite how things worked out in real life. The 13th amendment was closer to a beginning than an ending, an early chapter in the story of American racial justice which has not seen an end, and may never.

Not to say that, even with the terror and death that followed, the 13th amendment was not a great advance for human dignity. The vote on the amendment is a worthy climax to a story about war and freedom and herculean feats of politicking. Throughout, the film nods to the potential difficulties of reconstruction, and to the necessity of the stuff of the 14th and 15th amendments, which came later to grant citizenship and the franchise to freedmen. Perhaps, if we're lucky, some brave filmmaker will attempt to show on screen how those two controversial amendments passed. But, as Lydia Hamilton Smith says, speaking about the 13th amendment at the end of the film, maybe "Lincoln" is "enough for now." 

Book Review! Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest by Jan Morris

Jan Morris notes early in the introduction of her book Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest that the desire to write and read about Abraham Lincoln is so strong that by the year 2000 "more words had been written about him than about anyone else except Jesus Christ, to whom he was frequently likened.” The number of pages-per-year, however, might skew in Lincoln’s favor after accounting for Christ’s 1,800 year head start. Why then did Jan Morris write another book about Lincoln? It seems the answer is so Morris, an Englishwoman, can play contrarian to American historical lore. She rejects Lincoln-as-Christ, instead comparing the great President to “grape jelly.” Upon her first visit to America in the 1950s, she found Lincoln and the unappetizing diner condiment equally ubiquitous and commercialized. This distaste for Lincoln kitsch fueled her skepticism of Lincoln’s legend and pointed her toward a quest to discover the man for herself.

Unencumbered by an American childhood, Morris has few preconceptions about Lincoln. To her, he is not the Great Emancipator, or, indeed, an American Christ. Instead he is just a man, and she aims to find out what sort of man he was, warts and all. At first this is refreshing. Instead of romanticizing Lincoln’s childhood, as so many others have, Morris launches into the glib dismissal of Lincoln lore that would border on sacrilege for an American: the young Lincoln to Morris is little more than white trash, a boy she condescendingly refers to as a “frontier urchin.”

Lincoln, again

Another Lincoln trailer. Hmm....

-I appreciate attempts to connect the Civil Rights Movement with the Civil War.  But tracing the line between them requires traveling through some pretty dark stuff--reconstruction, the post-reconstruction "nadir" of African American experience, Jim Crow, etc. The image of MLK Jr. at the beginning of this trailer was instead a ham-handed way of saying that Lincoln, like MLK, was a "uniter". Someone who "unites" the people. Then we get stock photos of other "uniters." Some soldiers? Nelson Mandela? First wave feminists? Gandhi? What? If Spielberg wants me to think that Lincoln is going to be complete nonsense, this is perfect way to do it. It's some meaningless post-modern melange of symbols, which need not be American (though, obviously, the soldiers are--no foreign soldiers can "unite" like we can).
-The trailer makes clear that the movie is about the 13th amendment. Excellent. If nothing else, the film's focus (i.e. its focus on something other than the Emancipation Proclamation) should help make clear that the end of slavery was a lot more complicated than often assumed.
-Interesting interplay between Lincoln the Emancipator and Lincoln the Power Hungry. I wonder to what extent the film will indulge the neo-confederate fantasy that Lincoln was a dictator at the head of the War of Northern Aggression (I can tell you the answer. It's not at all). "I am the President of the United States, clothed in immense power!" What a great line.

The "Lincoln" trailer

A few thoughts on the Lincoln trailer.

The voice. Everything I've read about Lincoln's voice suggests that it was tinny, nasal, and higher pitched than the prototypical masculine hero's. It's a good sign that DDL chose a reasonably "accurate" timbre and accent for the role. In some ways it's a brave choice, because Lincoln is often portrayed with a deeper voice. And since his words, and his voice, and one of the most important parts of his legacy, a thinner voice may shock some people. The makeup, beard, and hair coloring are right on.

The movie seems to be about the end of the war and the 13th amendment. This strikes me as a bold choice, but a smart one. The film seems like less of a biopic and more of a character study of Lincoln at the end of his life. Biopics almost never work for me, because the story of a life is often too decentralized and sprawling to make sense of in a movie. By limiting the scope of the film Spielberg has the opportunity to really build Lincoln's character.

I know this is only a trailer, and I know that this is a Spielberg film, so maybe I should expect this...but the trailer is full of hokey, overly simple racial politics. Slavery? Well, that's bad. But there are bad people out there! So, let's end it? It's presentism, thinking about history without historical context. One of the difficult aspects of studying history, for me, is trying to understand how someone I admire (namely, Lincoln) could think that black people are naturally inferior to white people. Or why he thought that we should send American freedmen to a colony in Central America. These sorts of questions are central to any real understanding of history, and the trailer didn't seem interested in tackling them.

Anyway, I'm stoked to see this. It can't be worse than the vampire movie.