Lincoln

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”.

The Gettysburg Address was only 272 words in length, yet its historical rhetoric and significance is secure. Abraham Lincoln is a hugely revered figure; even most people in Britain have surely at least an inclination of what he was about. In Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, this legacy is brought to the big screen in evocative passion.

Before watching the film, I had a rough idea about Lincoln. I knew that he was the first Republican President, and that through the American Civil War he abolished slavery and reunited the seceded South with the Union. This background knowledge and less is more than enough preparation for the film. The factual contexts in the film are displayed quickly and simply, and are not mixed up within a complicated script. Despite the Civil War being one of the bloodiest in history, Spielberg’s intelligent focus on the trials of passage for the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution allows not only for a gripping film, but it also proves that films don’t need to be padded out with hours of battle gore and violence to be interesting; conflict and gunfire are fleeting moments in Lincoln.

What was so evocative about the film was the sense of history. Lincoln presents the issue of slavery which the Founding Fathers did not address, and highlights the tribulations of race in American history. The politician in me also focused on the intriguing paradigm shift in American history; in Lincoln, the Republicans (albeit with a mixture of conservatives and radicals) are the party pushing for progress and reform, whilst the Democrats are the obstructionists defending the racist status quo. However, throughout the 20th century it was the Democrats who forever changed the role of the state, and they used direct government power to legally enshrine more rights for African Americans, something which Republicans fought long and hard to resist in this era. The Solid South, which was a bastion of Democratic support, is now unmoving in its Republican strength.

Whilst the description of Abraham Lincoln as a heroic leader and great President is an accurate one, he was not originally an abolitionist. He initially wanted to preserve the Union and resist further expansion of slavery, but not abolition. However, Lincoln gloriously expands on Lincoln’s perseverance and integrity; he could easily have had peace had he admitted the South back into the Union with slaves, yet he soldiered on pushing for the 13th amendment full in the knowledge that it could tear apart the nation. Daniel Day-Lewis acts brilliantly in this film; to portray a historical figure is one task, to do it in another accent (he is British) is quite another.

The other element which makes Lincoln such an engaging film is its focus on the other players within the story; it is not exclusive to Lincoln. The domineering personalities of the likes of Thaddeus Stevens are presented brilliantly, along with the turmoil of their moral fights. General Ulysses S Grant is interestingly a bit-part player in the film, but the dramatic tension is built early on; Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward bluntly tells the President that even if every Republican was to vote ‘yes’ to the 13th Amendment (with the odd one abstaining), 20 Democrats would still be required to vote ‘yes’ too. Even with prior knowledge of the eventual outcome, this still displays the potential hopelessness of the situation, something which Lincoln in the film and poignantly in real life overcomes.

It is the great Presidents of progress such as Lincoln that encapsulate American greatness. Washington created a republic, Lincoln abolished slavery, FDR created the New Deal and LBJ fully enfranchised African Americans with the basic right to vote. Lincoln wasn’t on my list of favourite Presidents before the film (although I of course acknowledged this greatness), but Lincoln the film secures his presence in my list. Spielberg makes the film evocative enough to reflect the context of history, but does not make it overly dramatic; John Williams’ score is subtle yet noticeable, without any ostentatious chimes.

In shining a good light on the Republican Party of the 19th century, a negative tone is shone on the Republican Party of the 21st century. Huge generations have passed since Lincoln’s time, and it could be debated forever what he would have thought about the expansion of the Federal Government and its role in society. However, I’m quite confident in ascertaining that he would not abide by the Republicans’ current intransigence over the debt ceiling; a party prepared to tip the country over the brink for the sake of rigid and self-serving ideologies. He would not view Barack Obama as the “single greatest threat to the American way of life”, as one bigoted conservative activist noted (I believe bigoted is justified here; he listed the Civil War, the two World Wars, Communism and 9/11 as threats to the American way of life that have been overcome, yet he views Obama as worse than all of them?!), and he certainly could have stomached compromise and working together with Democrats (which was crucial to passing the 13th Amendment), rather than the current impasse at such a thought within the current GOP.

Films such as Lincoln enable historical figures to be brought to the fore again, not lest we forget them, but lest their significance is diminished. It is important to get such works of cinema right, and Steven Spielberg does this. The resources of American cinema, along with the patriotic clamour for certain Presidents, also allows for such work to be carried out. Spielberg does the enduring legacy of Abraham Lincoln justice. On a personal level, I would love cinematic representation of the lives of William Gladstone, David Lloyd-George, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. However, I don’t think they can compare to this:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the fight as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”