lincoln the movie review

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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 ... Read all 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. 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.

Steven Spielberg
Tony Kushner
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sally Field
David Strathairn
979 User reviews
569 Critic reviews
87 Metascore
107 wins & 251 nominations total

Top cast 99+

Abraham Lincoln

Mary Todd Lincoln

William Seward

Robert Lincoln

Preston Blair

Thaddeus Stevens

Robert Latham

Alexander Stephens

Edwin Stanton

Richard Schell

Ulysses S. Grant

Fernando Wood

George Pendleton

Tad Lincoln

Elizabeth Keckley

John Nicolay
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Trivia Steven Spielberg spent 12 years researching the film. He recreated Abraham Lincoln 's Executive Mansion office precisely, with the same wallpaper and books Lincoln used. The ticking of Lincoln's watch in the film is the sound of Lincoln's actual pocket watch. Lincoln's watch is housed in the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, Kentucky (not the Lincoln Presidential Library). It is the watch he carried the day of his assassination.
Goofs Two Connecticut Congressmen vote against the 13th Amendment during the movie; however, all four Connecticut Congressmen actually supported and voted in favor of the Amendment in 1865.

Abraham Lincoln : It was right after the revolution, right after peace had been concluded. And Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the king. The English sneered at how rough we are and rude and simple-minded and on like that, everywhere he went. 'Til one day he was invited to the townhouse of a great English lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed, time passed as happens and Mr. Allen found he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed to this. Relieved, you might say. Mr. Allen discovered on entering the water closet that the only decoration therein was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn't mention Washington's portrait. And finally his lordship couldn't resist and asked Mr. Allen had he noticed it, the picture of Washington. He said he had. Well, what did he think of its placement? Did it seem appropriately located to Mr. Allen? And Mr. Allen said it did. The host was astounded.

[British accent]

Abraham Lincoln : "Appropriate? George Washington's likeness in a water closet?"

[normal voice]

Abraham Lincoln : "Yes," said Mr. Allen, "where it will do good service. The world knows nothing will make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of George Washington."

[the whole room laughs]

Abraham Lincoln : I love that story.

Crazy credits No opening credits except for the main title.
Alternate versions For international releases, an additional prologue about the Civil War was added prior to the start of the film. It mostly shows archive photos with the prologue text included in it. This was decided by the studio's marketing department in its research which realized that while many non-American audiences know of the titular character, most of them are not familiar with the war itself.
Connections Featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #21.10 (2012)
Soundtracks We Are Coming, Father Abra'am Words by James Sloan Gibbons Music by Stephen Foster (as Stephen Collins Foster)

User reviews 979

The political process tangles with "honest" abe..

JohnDeSando
Nov 14, 2012
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Did Lincoln really say his primary goal was to save the union and not end slavery?
November 16, 2012 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Office Seekers
State Capitol, Capitol Square - Ninth & Grace Streets, Richmond, Virginia, USA (U.S. Capitol scenes)
Dreamworks Pictures
Twentieth Century Fox
Reliance Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$65,000,000 (estimated)
$182,207,973
Nov 11, 2012
$275,293,450
Runtime 2 hours 30 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Surround 7.1
Dolby Atmos

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Spielberg’s Lincoln: A Historian’s Review

By Nicholas Roland in 40 Acres , Special on November 28, 2012 at 1:30 pm | 22 Comments

As Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln draws crowds to theaters, a UT history graduate student reviews the film through a historian’s lens.

His verdict: while flawed, lincoln is a solid, mostly accurate portrait of a complex man..

Steven Spielberg’s latest historical drama chronicles the 16th president’s final months and his struggle for passage of the 13th Amendment by the House of Representatives in 1865. Lincoln’s enduring popularity means that this film will be subjected to intense scrutiny and debate by historians, movie reviewers, and culture warriors alike.

Fortunately, Lincoln is blessed with a remarkably accomplished cast. Daniel Day Lewis is Abraham Lincoln. Having supposedly read over 100 books on Lincoln in preparation for the role, he manages to convincingly replicate many aspects of Lincoln’s persona and physical aura: Lincoln’s purportedly high voice, his wry sense of humor and knack for storytelling, his slouched posture and awkward gait, and the overwhelming weariness incurred by the “fiery trial” of war all ring true.

Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Fields) is portrayed as a more or less sympathetic character, in accordance with more recent scholarship rejecting long-standing depictions of Mrs. Lincoln as a shrew, possibly suffering from a mental illness. Fields plays a First Lady who is grief-stricken over the loss of her son Willie and weary from the stress of a wartime presidential marriage. During a scene at a White House reception, she draws on her social training as a daughter of the Kentucky elite to skillfully defend against political critics.

Secretary of State William H. Seward (David Strathairn) also appears as an important source of support for Lincoln. Seward cuts patronage deals with lame duck Democratic Congressmen in order to help secure the passage of the 13th Amendment and acts as a sort of political muse to Lincoln. Seward harangues and cajoles Lincoln on policy and political strategy but ultimately serves as a loyal ally in carrying out Lincoln’s intent, a depiction born out in the historical record.

Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) is also a convincing secondary character, albeit with some historical problems. A leader of the radical wing of the Republican Party, Stevens is accurately portrayed as an advocate of racial equality and a vehement opponent of secessionists. However, a scene revealing the purported relationship between Stevens and his African-American housekeeper risks conveying the sense that this relationship was the primary motivation for Stevens’ crusade for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

Despite the excellent performances turned in by the star-studded cast, Lincoln has a number of shortcomings from a historian’s point of view. Based on Doris Kearns-Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln , the film is at times a taut political thriller and at times the inspirational story of the final abolition of American slavery. The choice to focus on the last few months of Lincoln’s presidency is appropriate given the ultimate outcome of the American Civil War: the defeat of the Confederacy and the end of legal slavery. However, this narrow focus glosses over Lincoln’s famously ambiguous views on slavery and racial equality.

Spielberg’s Lincoln appears committed to rapidly ending slavery and even suggests that suffrage might eventually be extended to black men. In his lifetime, Lincoln was consistently criticized by radical Republicans and African-American leaders such as Frederick Douglass for his equivocation on slavery and lenient plans for Reconstruction. Lincoln seems to have held a lifelong commitment to the free-soil ideology that every man, white or black, has the right to earn for himself by the sweat of his brow. Despite this conviction, Lincoln repeatedly stated that he wished to preserve the Union, either with or without slavery. Lincoln viewed the Emancipation Proclamation and the enlistment of black troops as a wartime expedient to preserve the Union.

Spielberg risks reviving the Great Emancipator myth. The best evidence suggests that Abraham Lincoln personally abhorred slavery as an institution while simultaneously denying the concept of racial equality.

Some historians have argued that Lincoln’s personal beliefs underwent a significant change during the last year of the Civil War, and Lincoln did in fact suggest to the reconstructed government of Louisiana in 1864 that “very intelligent” black men and “those who have fought gallantly in our ranks” might be given access to the ballot box. As depicted by the film, during the 1864 Presidential campaign Lincoln threw his support behind passage of the 13th Amendment and was active in securing its passage in 1865. But he never became a radical abolitionist like Thaddeus Stevens, or an outright advocate of racial equality. Lincoln continued to put forth plans for the resettlement of freedmen to the Caribbean even after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and possibly even after the passage of the 13th Amendment.

Early in the war, when Lincoln strenuously wished to avoid confronting slavery, black enslaved workers fled to federal lines and congregated around federal camps such as Fortress Monroe, Va. Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861 in reaction to this development, marking the first movement by the federal government to separate rebellious slaveholders from their enslaved workers. While Lincoln continued to insist that the war was a struggle to preserve the Union, African Americans did not wait for the Emancipation Proclamation to turn the war into much more than a sectional conflict. Slavery was destroyed as much by their individual actions as by the political workings of white politicians.

Perhaps most inexplicably, the movie does a poor job of identifying the various cabinet officials and Congressmen central to the plot. The average moviegoer is likely to be somewhat unsure of the exact role or importance of several characters. This is especially curious given the fact that obscure members of a Confederate peace delegation such as Confederate Senator R.M.T. Hunter and Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell are explicitly identified onscreen.

On the whole, Spielberg’s Lincoln is a masterful politician and a dynamic character, able to carefully mediate between his own evolving beliefs and the political realities of his age. This interpretation falls solidly in line with the mainstream of Lincoln scholarship. For an incredibly complex, sphinxlike figure such as Abraham Lincoln, perhaps we shouldn’t expect a more thorough interpretation from Hollywood.

Nicholas Roland is a graduate student in the UT history department. His academic interests include the 19th Century American South, Texas History, Military History, and Historical Memory.

This review first appeared on Not Even Past .

Photos from top:

Series of Thaddeus Stevens photographs by Matthew Brady, sometime between 1860 and 1865 (Image courtesy of Brady National Photographic Art Gallery)

Lydia Hamilton Smith, housekeeper and alleged common law wife of Thaddeus Stevens, photographed sometime prior to 1868 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Mary Todd Lincoln, 1846-7 (Image courtesy of Library of Congress)

Lincoln depicted as the Great Emancipator in Thomas Ball’s statue, Lincoln Park, Washington, DC (Image courtesy of Library of Congress)

Promotional studio image of Abraham Lincoln (left) and Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln (right)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

Tags: 13th amendment , Abraham Lincoln , civil war , Daniel Day Lewis , Doris Kearns-Goodwin , Lincoln , Movie review , Sally Fields , Steven Spielberg , Tommy Lee Jones , UT history