I couldn't decide whether to post my impressions of the movie in the random movie thread, or the Spielberg thread, so I'm just posting it here.

It's pretty good. Or as I've thought about it since I saw it the other day, a really good movie. In reflection, it's aging well for me. I rather enjoyed it. A little long, a complaint I only make about movies when I feel that drag. (Consider this is only 6 minutes longer than the immensely entertaining SKYFALL, which never felt draggy for me.) But not a serious knock for otherwise this is an impressive, entertaining, engaging "talky" historical political drama. I'm even impressed by how self-disciplined* Spielberg is when he could've gone (as his detractors love to knock) overboard with the sentimental cornyness in a movie about Abraham Lincoln, probably not just America's greatest President, but it's most revered as a martyred American Christ figure, representing the virtue of American Democracy. I even like that argument that Lincoln was one of America's best writers in that century, using few words to explain the idea of America.

I would be shocked if our local Capo doesn't knock this as an "self-assuring nationalistic, Oscar bait halography," (he would write that, wouldn't he?) and he technically wouldn't be wrong. Some might knock it as too weepy still. But LINCOLN isn't a biopic of his life, but instead covers his efforts in the early months of 1865, a technique John Ford used in his classic movie YOUNG MR. LINCOLN with Henry Fonda (which is absolutely worth Netflixing), using a compressed, dramatized segment of a man's life to reveal himself that as the guy that people always knew about him.

This Lincoln isn't a saint, but a shrewed, experienced political operator in his great domestic struggle to pass the 13th Constitutional Amendment to abolish slavery, while also dealing with an inconveniently timed Confederate peach branch offering for a diplomatic solution to the war, which could very well derail the Amendment. A dangerous time, and Lincoln carefully tightropes his administration through it. He willingly deploys every single (dirty) political trick to fight the good fight. Including the morally quesitonable and outright bribery in patronage to secure passage. These scenes are presented with humorous, entertaining sequences and montages of political operative James Spader wheeling and dealing with the lame duck Democrats Lincoln is wanting votes from.

We, at least Americans, are queasy about such underhanded "corrupt" politics to get legislation passed. We really despise year after year when our elected officials (and those who want those gigs) lie. Lincoln tells a big Whopper to the nation at a critical moment. LINCOLN argues that this is all OK because dammmit Lincoln was fighting to abolish mother fucking slavery, and afterwards it was all well worth the troubles, and doing it through the democratic process. (A message that I suppose Capo will question.) Contrast that with the South who started a war that killed over half a million people just to keep their precious private human property. Incidentally such regional cotton capitalists defended slavery using the Bible. Their descendents continue to do the same today in using big government against minorities, women, and Homosexuals. Dixie pride, hooray!

(Using modern analogies, I suppose I'm reminded of Obama's dogfight to pass Obamacare, flawed as it is, it finally brought America into the 20th century on Healthcare. Historically I think of FDR's shadey games in the late 1930s to fight Hitler, and get America into that war.)

For everything else, I like LINCOLN as a quite decent examination of the basic political process of how government can and does work, as painfully slow and usually useless as it is. Your passionate, activist members (usually in the minority) fighting against the majority of career politicians who among everything else want to keep their jobs and thus afraid of acting against the angry irresponsible mob that is the American electorate. It's not about whether you approve or understand this reality, but how you deal in getting shit done through our republican (small r) form of democracy. I loved that scene when the sarcastic abolitionist Congressman Thadeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) has to swallow his pride for the greater good and blurt out on the floor of the House of Representatives the complete opposite of what he believed. I wouldn't be shocked if Jones wins the Supporting Actor Oscar for this.

Sally Field is pretty good as Mary Todd Lincoln. I don't know if she will score an Actress (or Supporting Actress?) nod, but I like how she brings dimension to a character with a historical punchline reputation as a nut. (But none the less, I'm sure dealing with her helped train Abe for his Presidency.)

Daniel Day-Lewis is outstanding and probably will win another Oscar for his work as Lincoln. An astute, talented man that despite his endless arsenal of backcountry hick-flavored anecdotes and stories, is still a detached enigmatic, impenetrable figure (a great resource for his political gaming), always aware and careful about his surroundings. This instructs his public performance as President, Commander-In-Chief, party leader, and even family patriarch, who he treats diplomatically (intentionally or not) like he would office seekers hounding him outside his door (which the movie captures.) The only exception is when he loses his temper with his son Robert (played by Joseph-Gordon Levitt). But otherwise I feel warm regardless for this Lincoln, because I got the sense (as historical record claims) that Abe always morally deplored slavery and apparently progressively evolved in his views on blacks. But he's playing the long game, one step at a time, always behind public opinion, never ahead of it. And like FDR I mentioned earlier regarding his pre-WW2 agenda, he ultimately successfully transformed his country. The unmentioned tragedy in LINCOLN however is Lincoln's assassination. What if he lived to complete his 2nd term? Would he have been able to carefully navigate the politics of post-Civil War America (especially regarding Reconstruction) and one opines that Jim Crow is avoided and just-freed blacks in the South are not doomed into second class citizenship for a century?

It's baffled some viewers who wondered why Lincoln late in the movie was shown being critical of newspaper coverage of his speech about giving freed men the right to vote (and i.e. citizenship), that he said he only supported giving intelligent, responsible black men getting this Constitutional right. But I think Spielberg just wanted to show that before a bullet ended him, he was continuing his great political long game onwards, even if that said misreported speech was actually what convinced Southern nationalist John Wilkes Booth to abandon his plan to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom, and instead murder him. I did love when Lincoln with quie grace told the Southern peace delegation that it's over, and reading Lewis' eyes, you can see how much he wanted to say that reality check for perhaps most of his life.

The movie has a few flaws I'll mention. I sorta wished LINCOLN ended after the scene in the White House on that fateful night in April 1865, his walking away (into mythology) as his immortal words from his Second Inaugural Address would've sufficed. But it went on. I won't say the scenes at Appomatox Court House or Lincoln's deathbed vigil or even that terrific end scene at the theatre (that aint Ford's Theatre) are bad. I wonder if Spielberg, who's been wanting to make a Lincoln movie forever it seems, had dreamed up all these shots he wanted to capture and well shit, he didn't want to not do them when he had the chance. Remember MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL? "Enough already!" Also I found John Williams' score here surprisingly forgettable.

But otherwise, LINCOLN is worth seeing. I give it 4 stovetop hats out of 5. I'm also encouraged with the positive reaction the public is giving it so far. I feel encouraged whenever such a talky historical drama, and not another FX heavy spectacle produced for children, does well.

*=Arguably the opening scene betrays that assessment, the President meeting with Union troops (both black and white) and them reciting the Gettysburg Address to him. Corny as it is, I like it.