LEWIS. Luminous and insighful portrayal
Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” is a masterful tribute to a truly great man. Even more admirably, Spielberg succeeds in making history come vibrantly alive without watering it down in the facile, feckless name of “entertainment.” Only a true master of the cinema could have done it, so our admiration for the filmmaker has increased even further.
A third key factor in the exceptional achievement of “Lincoln” is the luminous and insightful portrayal of the title character by Daniel Day Lewis. It’s a tough assignment to portray a truly great man, but Lewis more than measures up to the challenge with his vast resources as an interpretative screen artist.
With both grandeur and subtlety, he has vivified the heart of the Great Emancipator, whose vigorous moral resolve enabled him to push through a key amendment that freed millions of slaves throughout the then fledgling United States of America, and enabled the nation to truly become “the land of the brave—and the home of the free.”
Key amendment
The film purposefully limits its focus to the last four months of Lincoln’s presidency. Having just been re-elected, which was a testament to his great popularity, he could just have focused on ending the bitterly fought Civil War that was still pitting the South versus the North over the contentious issue of slavery. But, Lincoln chose to fight for full emancipation as well, despite the vociferous dissent of his key advisers.
What had prompted his “mad” decision? Perhaps, he sensed that he didn’t have much time left, that death by assassination was waiting to claim him long before his time? Nobody could possibly know for sure, but we are grateful for his “mad” resolve, because so many people benefited from it.
Aside from dramatizing Lincoln’s inspired intransigence with the great help of Lewis’ insightful portrayal, Spielberg is eminently successful in detailing scores of other characters. Most other directors would have balked at the “impossible” task, but Spielberg embraced it, knowing full well that, if his film didn’t make history come vibrantly alive in great detail, its lessons wouldn’t be sufficiently underscored, learned—and “earned.”