Cast: Where to begin? So many people. There's no way I can address them all. Daniel Day Lewis, unsurprisingly completely inhabits the role. His is Lincoln. He plays him like a walking, breathing legend and completely sells it. Tommy Lee Jones is the next biggest stand-out. He's playing a 1860 version of himself but does it with such conviction that it's hard to care. Everyone else gets their speech or moment to shine. As odd as it is in an actor's showcase like this though, this movie isn't about them and none of them try to take over. Props to James Spader however for being gloriously slimy yet righteous. One issue I had, and it's almost all on me, not the movie, is that other than Day Lewis I couldn't see any of the actors as their character. Everyone else was that actor playing a character on the screen. I'm not sure why this is.
Plot: Years back, when I read Atlas Shrugged, I remember being acutely aware that the book was written for the speeches. There was plot to it, but nothing worked as well as the moments when someone went on a 2+ page oration. It didn't take away from how I felt about the book, but it helped me to understand the framework of the novel. Lincoln is the same way. It's a collection of speeches. Damn good speeches. It's not like the plot is all that new to me. The bill passes. We are mostly following a lot of "how" which is completely up to the creative team to show how this happened. Overall, it is less about Lincoln himself than it is about the passing of the 13th Ammendment, and for that reason, I think the movie ended about 10 later than it needed to.
Setting: The plot's pretty standard. This movie was always going to live or die by how well it recreated this place in time. It unquestionably succeeded. Everything feels very lived in and it looks like a genuine recreation of Washington D.C. It was pretty impressive.
Elephant in the Room: We just finished an election season and now I'm supposed to watch something else about politics? It seems cruel to shove even more bipartisanship down our throats. In agree. No one is more tired of this stuff than me. That's why I'll say this movie isn't for everyone. It navigates the ins and outs of passing a bill in a lot of detail. It's an interesting lesson in how things were done differently (yet still the same) 150 years ago. I'd've appreciated if they would've waited for an odd year to release this so I could get some sort of respite.
To Sum Things Up:
Lincoln is an epic of minimal proportions that could only exist as a passion project. It is hyper-focused on a short period of time and a man who is second only to Jesus in his deification. Without doing much any scene could slip into awards-chasing Oscar-bait. Thankfully, it always dials it back just enough to not be preachy or saccharine. Overall I liked it, but it's not my favorite movie this year by a long shot.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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