This is politics as it is really played, yet few writers have found a way to make it as compelling as Kushner does here. ![]() Enlisting three buffoonish vote-buyers (James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson), the executive doesn’t hesitate to exploit his immense powers, which extend to offering cushy government jobs, pardons and other presidential privileges to those willing to embrace his position. In place of vicarious emotion and tour de force filmmaking, “Lincoln” offers a largely static intellectual reappraisal of the great orator, limiting not only the scenery chewing but also the scenery itself in what amounts to Spielberg’s most play-like production yet it’s a style that will keep many viewers at arm’s length.Įmphasizing talk over action, Kushner concentrates on Lincoln’s strategy of forcing an unpopular and recently defeated policy through a lame-duck House of Representatives. The theater-trained scribe, who previously co-wrote “Munich” for the director, defies what admirers expect of a Spielberg-made Lincoln biopic. Liberally adapted from Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s 2005 book “Team of Rivals,” Tony Kushner‘s script dramatizes the behind-the-scenes story of the wheeling and dealing required to pass the 13th Amendment - undoubtedly the legacy for which Lincoln hoped to be remembered, not realizing how compelling audiences would find every aspect of his private life 144 years later. ![]() Spielberg, however, has faced the issue head-on, not just once (“ The Color Purple“) or twice (“Amistad”), but three times, confronting it most directly - at the very core of the policy - in “Lincoln.” The title functions as something of a misnomer, considering that the president here serves as the instrument to emancipation and not the actual focus of the film, as if “Amistad” had been released as “Quincy Adams.” Too seldom does American cinema deal with the country’s most shameful policy: the paradox by which a nation founded on equality might allow the subjugation and servitude of one race to persist for nearly a century.
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