Lincoln: Better Off Undead
One comes away from Disney DreamWorks’ Lincoln wondering what temptations induced playwright Tony Kushner, the author of the heartbreaking, hilarious and deeply introspective Angels in America, to write the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s $50 million cinematic civics lesson.
A mélange of Ken Burns documentary, grifters’ caper, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Edward Albee psychodrama—with a redeeming dose of 1860s-style Modern Family—Spielberg’s Lincoln is not so much an exploration of history and character as it is a high production-value social-studies film illustrating how a bill becomes a law or, in this case, the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Lincoln takes place from January to April of 1865. Except for a perfunctory battlefield scene and a graphic depiction of a gurney unloading a bloody pile of recently amputated limbs, the action occurs inside various governmental offices, congressional chambers and the White House, giving the film an oddly claustrophobic feel. The tension driving the film is between Lincoln’s conviction that the Constitution must be amended to ban slavery before the Confederacy’s surrender, and the countervailing political pressures to negotiate an immediate peace and sacrifice all chance of a 13th Amendment. Lincoln’s argument rests on the status of slaves not as people but as war contraband belonging to the victorious North. The amendment’s enactment, therefore, is depicted not as a triumph of morality but, as the result of clever lawyering, petty patronage and personal will.
The action centers on the governing elites, depicting Lincoln as the ultimate insider. Thus, if you are only going to see one Lincoln biopic this year, I heartily recommend instead Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which—after a brief theatrical run this summer—is now available on DVD. Its fantastical narrative is actually the more truthful in showing how revolutionary change gets accomplished through the militancy and mobilization of outsiders and the oppressed.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/14175/lincoln_better_off_undead/
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