Lincoln in review

So I saw Lincoln at the Bethesda Row Cinema on Friday night. My mom agreed to go with me - nothing is better than a Mom Date - and picked me up and everything. When we got to the theater at 8:30, we found out that they were sold out until their last showing of the evening - at 10:15. Well, OK. We're grown-ups, dammit. So we bought our tickets, and gave tapas at Jaleo a shot.

I like tapas, but it was my mom's first time, and she was... let's say underwhelmed. On the 18-month old Serrano ham: "It tastes like it's twenty years old." On the mushrooms: "I'm pretty sure this is what whale blubber tastes like." I thought everything we ordered (gambas al ajillio, gambas gabardino, the 18-month aged Serrano ham, the chicken dish and the setas with potato puree) was fine, but for all the hype, none of the food was enough to make us come back again. Although their Coke was delicious.

But Lincoln? Fantastic. I've been a Lincoln buff since before I have memories. When my kindergarten classmates wanted to be princesses and firefighters, I wanted to be Abraham Lincoln. I can only imagine my poor parents having to break it to their three-year old daughter that she cannot, in fact, be a dead white man, and having to soothe her hurt feelings by reassuring her that she'll just have to be the president instead.

I digress. As a historian and former costume designer, the movie was eye and brain candy for my soul. Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals with a screenplay written by Tony Kushner (of Angels in America fame), it focuses on Lincoln's attempt to push the Thirteenth Amendment through the House of Representatives in the months before his assassination. This is clearly and firmly placed within the context of the final months of the Civil War, and in the emotional aftermath of the Lincoln family losing son Willie to typhoid. The film paints a vivid picture of Lincoln the man, a consummate storyteller and shrewd politician, one willing to circumvent the law to enact morally right but legally suspect edicts like the Emancipation Proclamation.

The performances in the film are fantastic as well. Daniel Day-Lewis is nothing short of breath-taking as Lincoln. I feared that Lincoln would be given the stereotypical moral hero treatment, with a deep, booming voice and vaguely British-sounding accent - you know, so you remember it's old-timey and that he's important. But instead, DDL stays true to the historical accounts of Lincoln that stress the president's high pitched, nasal, reedy voice with a slight Kentucky drawl. He's also clearly studied that dreamy, faraway gaze of Lincoln so familiar from Mathew Brady's photographs. Sally Field gives a subtle, toned-down portrayal of Mary Todd, one with whom a viewer can be far more sympathetic than Mary Tyler Moore's histrionic ball-buster from Gore Vidal's Lincoln. Jared Harris, one of my favorite actors from Mad Men, shows up as a near-ringer for General Grant; his American accent is far better than David Oyelowo's, whose brief cameo as a USCT upstart is the weakest of the film. David Strathairn is predictably solid as Secretary of State William Seward. Tommy Lee Jones is even better as Senator Thaddeus Stevens. A quick Google Image search of Stevens shows how cantankerous he so clearly was in real life, but Jones plays him with a lovable crankiness that makes him one of the best parts of the movie; the resolution of his storyline is easily one of the film's most delightful.

From my view, the film's only weakness is its last two minutes (I call this "the Spike Lee treatment"). The scene in which the president leaves the White House for Ford's Theater after a light-hearted exchange with his butler should have been the end. Instead, the audience is forced to endure a confusing expository scene of Tad discovering his father's death in another theater, an awkwardly delivered "He belong to the ages now" from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and a painfully hokey superimposition of Lincoln inside of a flame that pans to a closing speech (I'm embarrassed that I still can't remember which one it is). Viewers unfamiliar with Civil War politicians and Cabinet members may also find the constant barrage of new characters confusing.

So if you can't tell by now, I'm a colossal Lincoln nerd, and I loved the movie. I definitely see it being nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor Oscars; I predict DDL will win. I recommend the film with absolutely no reservation.

Oh, and now I've got a new tattoo to add to my wish list: