Friday, October 26, 2012

Lincoln


I had a chance to preview Lincoln, the new Daniel Day-Lewis/Steven Spielberg film. While I'm not crazy, generally, about going to the movies, nor crazy about political and period pieces (perhaps especially the Civil War), it was free and Daniel Day-Lewis is great, so I went. And going reminded me what I really don't like about seeing movies in the theater: I always think that the things that get big laughs from the audience are super corny, and the things that I think are side-splittingly funny, I don't hear so much as a chuckle at from anyone but me.

Ah well.

The movie was so pro-Lincoln that it even made it look as if Lincoln wrestled with the legality and constitutionality of his decisions, fearing that he would take power away from the states. I don't know much about his biography, so maybe that's true. Mary Todd Lincoln was very sympathetically portrayed: it was good to have a strong woman in the film (heavens knows, there were few enough women), but I'm sort of attached to my grade-school picture of her as a selfish, crazy, superstitious woman. The film made her out to be only mortal, next to Lincoln's deity.

One of the characters loses it at one point and yells at Lincoln, "I don't want to hear another one of your stories." I felt a keen sense of sympathy and agreement with him.  

I thought Daniel Day-Lewis did a nice job as Lincoln and looked exactly like him (the make-up and costuming were incredible), and Tommy Lee Jones was a phenomenal Thaddeus Stevens. I love James Spader with all of my heart, but he needs more dignity than he got as the jester/fool-like character of Mr. Bilbo. James Spader plays dignified roles with spunk, but it's just below him to play a role of this sort.

2 comments:

timetraveler said...

I have yet to see the film; according to a person who saw a showing that included a Q&A with James Spader, Spielberg gave Spader the script and said he had three characters in mind that he thought James would be good at in the film. He didn't tell the actor which they were, he just told him to read the script and pick the character you would like to play...Spader chose Bilbo, and after a short screen test he got the job. It was the role he wanted to play.

Emily Hale said...

That's very interesting. But perhaps says something about letting the cast choose their role.

On the other hand, maybe it was just the character of Bilbo, rather than Spader's portrayal of him, that I disliked.