Lincoln

The photography in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” often paints our country’s 16th President in stylized obscurity, the beautiful backlighting casting Honest Abe in shadows of his own history. It’s a movie that fully embraces our American virtues, and yet for all we thought we knew about Lincoln suggests there is more to the man than the icon.

The Lincoln we see here is not the towering man with the deep, resounding voice that can carry across a battlefield. This is a Lincoln suffering from nightmares, giving piggyback rides to his youngest son, wrapping himself in an old blanket, telling cute stories with his soothing, high-pitched whisper of a voice and furrowing his brow as he deals with the impasse of war and the effort to abolish slavery. This is perhaps not the man we imagined in preschool but the man that was and the man who still portrayed an immense presence.

When screenwriter Tony Kushner (“Munich,” “Angels in America”) approached Spielberg with an adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography, it was a sprawling 500-page script on Lincoln’s life. Spielberg focuses in on the short period between April of 1864 and January 1865 when the Civil War is coming to a close, the Senate has already approved the 13th Constitutional Amendment and the Democrats in the House threaten to vote it down.

Lincoln’s battle is a powerful paradox. End the war and readmit the Confederacy and they will certainly block the law to end slavery. Fail to pursue peace and the swing votes in Congress may turn against him. And yet if slavery is abolished and done so before fighting resumes in the spring, the war is over, as the South has nothing more to fight for.  Their fight to get it passed is a war of words, not of worlds, and “Lincoln” is approached as a stately performance piece, not a war epic.

It is more theatrical than cinematic, but Spielberg does the job of emblazoning these big ideas onto the silver screen. For all its talking, “Lincoln” is a movie of action. Their Congress gets more done in two and half hours than ours did in two and a half years, and the scenes of debate and voting are invigorating moments of politics, racism, boastfulness and insight.

And because all these historical figures are in their own way larger than life, Spielberg has assembled a cast that is just as impressive. Daniel Day-Lewis is remarkable as Lincoln. At times, Lincoln is calm and without words for all the harried politicians in his cabinet. Day-Lewis seems almost detached from the scene, but he slowly builds and shows why Lincoln was so arresting. Sometimes the end to his story is a punch line, like about how a man loathed the image of George Washington, and at others he unleashes philosophical truths of equality and common sense with the greatest of ease. Unlike some Day-Lewis performances, he melds into this role and never proclaims he is acting. Sometimes he finds the best notes when he’s just being a father, child on his knee in a rocking chair and revealing his deep humanity.

Then there’s Sally Field as Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd, a frazzled, fiery woman of great hidden power. Field above all is the one who sets the film’s stakes, heaping the burden of passing the amendment with the threat of the death of their oldest son (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and her admitting herself to a mental institution. Watch Field as she greets guests at their White House party, holding up a long line to speak more candidly with some of the key Congressmen. She appears at once absent minded and in full control, figuratively shaking hands with a powerful grip but really not exerting any pressure at all.

But best of all is perhaps Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican representative from Pennsylvania. In one pivotal Congressional scene, he goes against his belief that all men are literally created equal and proclaims that all men should be equal under the law, regardless of race or, as he says to his vocal Democratic opponent, character. The beauty of Jones’s performance is that although his dialogue is eloquent and verbose language of the times, Jones can still deliver such lines with the same blunt force he does in all of his roles.

Spielberg and Kushner have put a great deal of effort into recreating every period detail as historically accurate. We get a movie of remarkable production design in stunningly authentic and old-fashioned clarity. But “Lincoln” does still feel like a movie for the modern day. He jokingly asks, “Since when has the Republican Party unanimously supported anything,” and draws startling parallels between Obama and Lincoln by observing that many Democrats viewed Lincoln as something of a tyrant.

By ending on its bittersweet note, it leaves us with the idea that some ideas and possibilities must be withheld now to achieve prosperity in the future. There may be some wet eyes as the visage of Lincoln burns powerfully in a gas lamp during a closing shot.

“Lincoln” may not always be the rousingly patriotic portrait of Lincoln we imagined, but it’s the American vision we deserve.

4 stars

The Amazing Spider-Man

What people really like about Spiderman isn’t the web slinging or the red-blue spandex or the zippy one-liners; its that beneath the mask there is a smart, witty, nerdy, likeable and relatable kid in Peter Parker.

Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire knew that for their 2002 film “Spider-Man,” and Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield seem to know it here for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which is essentially a remake of Raimi’s film. But Garfield’s Peter Parker doesn’t have the boyish charms of Maguire’s, and his mixed persona makes for a film that suffers from its other clichés and hokey gags.

I’m dating myself when I realize that “Spider-Man” is in fact 10 years old, and there are likely a new generation of 12-year-olds who will watch this version and appreciate it just fine. But everyone else may have fatigue at just how familiar this origin reboot is.

Peter Parker is left with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben (Sally Field and Martin Sheen) after his parents are forced to leave in a hurry, never to be seen again. Now as a bright high school teenager, he’s rediscovering his father’s past and tracks down an old colleague, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), who transforms into a monstrous lizard thanks to a genetic algorithm provided by Peter. It’s then Peter’s job to stop him after he’s bitten by a genetically mutated spider that gives him enhanced strength, reflexes and an ability to stick to walls.

What’s tiring is how boilerplate Peter’s backstory is. Of course he has to deal with the obnoxious bully in school, stumble through awkward conversations with the cute Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and rehash the boring pseudo-science that explains his mutation.

And while the original “Spider-Man” is no less guilty of these clichés, Director Marc Webb (“500 Days of Summer”) overdoes it. The high school drama consumes the entire first half of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” and for every visual gag, there’s an added cinematic punch line in case you forgot how to react, be it in a cheerleader’s bubble gum popping over her face or a Coldplay song cueing in to fill the gooey void.

Garfield handles all these moments with a peculiar attitude. On the streets in his costume, he’s notoriously smarmy and glib, and then at home or around his girlfriend, he shuts up into an awkward ball of angst. Garfield emanates so little chemistry with Stone that you wonder why Gwen is so drawn to him.

“The Amazing Spider-Man” also lacks a moment as instantly iconic as Spiderman kissing Mary Jane upside down in the rain, and Webb is not the visual technician that Raimi is, so a few shots from Spidey’s POV as he careens through the air look plain cartoonish.

Maybe it’s the 12-year-old me talking, but I was able to take the original “Spider-Man” somewhat seriously and still realize it was a goofy popcorn movie. It was as if Peter Parker never forgot how dopey he really is just by putting on that mask. “The Amazing Spider-Man” on the other hand is cornball all the time and thinks itself otherwise. It forgets who’s inside that spandex suit.

2.5 stars