Some greatness is self-evident

Abraham Lincoln always seemed beyond or beneath our grasp. His likeness carved in granite at the Lincoln Memorial huge and resolute, but never soft and approachable. His relaxed face on the $5 bill static and flat. His bust on the penny scuffed and common — ask yourself, when was the last time you halted your gait to retrieve a lost penny?

Here in Lincoln, though, the 16th president of the United States is brought to life and into focus. This isn’t just a movie; it’s a portrait of startling clarity, crafted with a lyrical force propelled forward by Daniel Day-Lewis’ flawless performance, one for the ages. He doesn’t just perform Lincoln; Day-Lewis channels him, which will come as no surprise to fans of the actor and his uncanny ability to transform into three-dimensional characters that extend beyond the screen.

Day-Lewis is occasionally trapped in a vortex of some of the Lincoln parody material — the frequent “aw shucks” storytelling, the “Honest Abe” geniality, the uncompromising morals — because, well, that’s how he was and there are numerous documents to prove it. But even those elements are given fresh makeovers as Lincoln’s frantic final months are overwhelmed with political infighting and moral compromises that shook the president to his bones.

Lincoln will educate many viewers. It taught me a thing or two. The one fact that will surprise many is central to the plot: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, his executive order that freed the slaves, was viewed by many as a war-time act that would dissolve as soon as the Civil War ended. At one point the Confederacy was willing to talk of surrender as long as slavery wouldn’t be touched further. Lincoln, though, was willing to prolong the war if it meant slavery would get a permanent death. This could only be accomplished with a constitutional amendment, though Congress was as hotly divided as it is today and change seemed unlikely.

A small army of Lincoln supporters — including Secretary of State William Seward (David Straithairn) and abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) — set about acquiring the necessary votes for what would become the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery. They were more than a dozen votes short; each one would be a battle.

Politics, it seems, are politics, even back in Lincoln’s day, so some of the negotiations are a little shady. In particular, Lincoln began promising cushy jobs and titles to lame-duck representatives. He gets one congressman to flip-flop for a postmaster job; another changes course for the ownership of a toll road. Did Lincoln buy votes? The movie makes that case, but it also shows how conflicted Lincoln was about those dirty deeds. He hated them and they tortured him, but he was willing to fight hard to guarantee that slavery ended. At one point, he enlists three thieves and con artists — played wonderfully by James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson — to go out and procure votes by any means necessary.

These three hucksters add some levity to the bureaucratic drama, especially stand-out Spader, but don’t be confused about what Lincoln is: it is a game of political chess. Aside from three scenes on battlefields — two quiet and contemplative, one violent and raw — much of Lincoln takes place in dimly lit rooms within the White House or in the House chambers, where several key debates and their subsequent votes take place. The movie is full of long passages of uninterrupted dialogue, many spoken by Lincoln, that reveal the conflict and drama that revolved ominously around the end of slavery. And though the movie is long at nearly two and a half hours, it never drags or tires, but instead maintains a careful shuffle ever forward.

The movie was made by Steven Spielberg, and his careful hands can be felt around many of the scenes even when the touch feels heavy and forced, like when a hospital orderly hauls a wheelbarrow full of amputated limbs from a field hospital. It even looked and sounded like a Spielberg movie with Janusz Kaminski’s realistic window-breached lighting and John Williams’ patriotic score. In many ways Lincoln is just as accessible and gimmicky as other Spielberg hits, from Jurassic Park to Jaws; like a giant killer shark or cloned dinosaurs, the film is held up by a single great concept, Abraham Lincoln like you’ve never seen him before. But there is also a complicated side to the film that reverberates more like Schindler’s List or Munich, the director’s more challenging pictures. This movie certainly  acknowledges the “timeless American hero” part of the Lincoln fable, yet it also portrays his various faults and flaws. In the end, of course, Lincoln is quite a heroic figure, but Spielberg fights to get us there with a well-rounded story and a fully realized set of conflicts.

Really, though, the star here is Day-Lewis, who is just completely and utterly convincing as Lincoln. He even looks like Abe, with those sunken cheekbones, large ears and that familiar beard. Much has been made about his voice, and it’s all true: it’s unlike every Lincoln voice you’ve ever heard — gentle, higher pitched, nasally, folksy — nor are likely to hear again. The film frames Lincoln as a great leader, but also a patient husband and a weary father. Scenes with Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his oldest son Robert allow Day-Lewis to show off the range of his Lincoln. He scoops from the president’s darkest days as he patiently guides his wife, who he called Molly, through the pain of losing a son three years earlier, to the struggle with Robert who wanted to fight for the Union, though Abe couldn’t bear the thought of Molly losing another child. There are two curious scenes with both these characters, and both are true: Mary Todd Lincoln was fighting with Congress over vast overspending and her attempts to cover it up, and Robert was at Appomattox when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant ending the Civil War.

Much of the movie is spent just watching Lincoln in all his glory. He often interrupts more important conversations to tell long-winded (but always interesting) stories or analogies that loop back around to a single thought-out premise. Those stories involve whales, lawyers, grain, compasses and arithmetic, and they show Lincoln as a deep thinker, if also a genuine storyteller who admired the attention his title commanded. Slavery troubled him, you can see it on his face. You can hear it in his voice.

We will never know what that really looked or sounded like, but here in Lincoln we get mighty close.