REVIEW - LINCOLN

A film at simple, utter ease with itself. It is long, yet it is nimble, yet it is quite tranquil, yet it deals with matters of great urgency and monumental historical significance, yet it is, in essence, little more than an intimate character study over a period of mere weeks, yet it does not probe, nor push, nor bombard us with its political prescience and topicality, yet it is an unabashedly political film. In that it is political, though, it is not particularly partisan. Rather, its primary concerns are with the mechanics of politics, the toil, the worry, the graft that goes into creating and passing the law of the land (not enforcing, alas, as that story is far from over even now). This angle is a fascinating one, yet it is not very revealing. It is a cinematic document of the ordinary process of passing an extraordinary bill, yet its ordinariness is what makes it most out-of-the-ordinary in Hollywood, not least from Steven Spielberg. This is surely not that same man who directed Indiana Jones? But you may forget, most frequently, when watching Lincoln, that it is a Spielberg film; he adopts a measured approach to directing that is largely new to him, intuiting that the vigour of Tony Kushner's vast screenplay, the importance of the events depicted therein, and the presence of Daniel Day-Lewis: Force of Nature in the role of the greatest president of the greatest nation, are, cumulatively, sustenance enough for one film. John Williams mostly refrains from laying it on too thick in his score, Janusz Kaminski's lighting is quite distracting. Sally Field chews up the screen - you grow to enjoy it - but the near-constant roster of familiar faces in the ensemble has a novelty effect in the end. Standouts include James Spader, Lee Pace, and, in smaller roles, Julie White, Bruce McGill and TV actors David Costabile and Boris McGiver. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, however, is miscast, and too much attention is lavished upon him. This film's lasting impact is not as character study, though, nor as a political study nor history lesson, but as an adroit, keenly aware examination of a society undergoing an immense change.