Lincoln, the new movie

The myth remains and seems less a myth and more a magnificent fact even though I understand perfectly well that this is a movie, not a documentary.  Lincoln directed by Steven  Spielberg, with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role and the screenplay by Tony Kushner. Sally Fields is the always pained Mary Todd, tiny, decked out in extravagant gowns, while her husband seems to have one suit and never wants to wear his gloves. Beard and make up and many low angle, upward camera shots make Linoln a towering figure although I believe his Marfan's syndrome made him more gangly than Day-Lewis can possibly be.

The movie is about the wheeling and dealing that got the 13th amendment passed--the passion needed to pass such an amendment against great odds in the House of Representatives. It's a kind of passion we have seen in almost no presidents, truly the stuff of myth. Kushner's language is pungent and totally believable among these men with their prejudices and personal agendas. Writer an director join forces brilliantly throughout. At the outset is an astonishing scene as the towering man enters a room in the White House where a small boy lies sleeping in front of a fireplace. The tall man folds himself down on the floor beside the the boy, speaks to him softly, wakes him enough for the boy to climb on his back and be carried to his bed. Has any movie ever opened with such a quiet but dramatic picture of fatherly love?  Such a scene is not a part of the myth -- rather it was not, but now it is.

The movie is bracketed with some of Lincoln's most eloquent statements. At the beginning two black soldiers ask the President for true equality under the law; they quote the Gettysburg address, taking turns speaking the lines until they have to move away and a white soldier finishes the speech. At the end, as flashback, we see and hear Lincoln himself give the second inaugural address. These words are engraved in the memory of most of us even if we think we've forgotten them.

Superb acting throughout goes almost without saying.  Scenes are tight, sometimes almost claustrophobic, battlefield scenes are wrenching. I hope every Congressman in Washington will see this film and pause long enough to realize that nothing fine every happens without some compromises and some deep consideration of the future, rather than just the next election.

Birthday

Yes, it is Abraham Lincoln's actual birthday. For a good many years I worked several days a week in an older office building in NYC across from Grand Central Station named The Lincoln Building where the rather magnificent marble lobby was graced with one of the bronzes cast from an early model of French's sculpture that is the heart of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington -- the photo above -- that is familiar to almost everyone who ever visited Washington, D.C.

More than the somewhat cold and distant George Washington, I think Lincoln will always be our most beloved President. He was down to earth, he was eloquent, his ideas were grand, he preserved the union and signed the Emancipation Proclamation and he was martyred. At a literary gathering last night one of the men recited from memory, "Lincoln Walks at Midnight." Not a moving recitation in itself but because the man is 70-ish and has held the poem in his memory since boyhood, because it is that meaningful to him.

Today may also go down in Egyptian history as the day they gained democracy. The many who have been on the streets for three weeks, are rejoicing and believe they have won democracy. Those of us who have read newspapers and watched revolutions in many other countries are not so sure -- certainly not when the government is now in the hands of the military. It was not a bloodless coup but far less bloody than it might have been. It is easy to be comfortable here, watching the news unfold and being sanguine about it and not very emotional. We who are comfortable have the habit of letting distant events disappear from our thoughts -- we would not be able to function if we were constantly emotionally involved in what's going on in the world.

After seeing a documentary yesterday about the 1970 strikes at the mines in Kentucky fighting Duke Power [by then already owned by BP] one woman spoke of being stunned that she was ignorant of it. She had been involved in the Civil Rights movement but by the '70s was a contented young wife and mother and so this civil unrest did not penetrate her consciousness. I think one of the reasons Lincoln is so well loved is that events of the Civil War touched everyone in the US, there were no pockets of ignorance or un-involvement. So his leadership became legendary, and beloved. Although he was not universally loved in his life time. Unfortunately, being martyred polishes the gold of the reputation.