Oscar-down #8: Lincoln

(Will counts down his favorite Best Picture noms! #9)

#8: Lincoln

   Set at the start of 1965, Spielberg's Lincoln focuses on the 16th President's struggles to get Congress to swiftly pass the 13th amendment, formally abolishing slavery. Facing steep opposition from the Democrats and potential revolt from Republicans, Abraham Lincoln is forced to weigh his ideals against the prospect of peace.

Why this should be higher:
   The acting in Lincoln is phenomenal from top to bottom. When Daniel Day-Lewis was cast as the lead in a Spielberg biopic his winning of an Oscar became a foregone conclusion, whether merited or not. But Day-Lewis earns all of the accolades he has received for his portrayal of the President, falling deep into the role of a man committed to his cause even as his self-doubt tears at him inside. The rest of the cast is a murder's row of character actors embracing their parts, no matter how small some of them may be. Particular standouts are James Spader as the party operative tasked with wrangling the needed votes, whether by legal means or not, Joseph Gordan-Levitt acting valiantly in the underwritten role of Robert Lincoln, and Jarad Harris pulling off a surprisingly effective Ulysses S. Grant. And Tommy Lee Jones...well he pretty much does a Tommy Lee Jones impression the entire time. But sometimes that's just what a film needs, and this is no exception.

   In choosing to focus on such a specific and political aspect of Lincoln's Presidency, the film also succeeds at a tricky task: making legislative action interesting to watch. Centering Lincoln around the battle for the 13th amendment, an often glossed-over part of history, lets the film create a decent amount of suspense around the subject; we may now that the amendment passed, but not how. It also refuses to shy away from Abraham Lincoln's willingness to take draconian and extralegal measures when he felt there was a greater need, something that does much to make the often lionized figure more understandable and empathetic.

Why it isn't:
   Unfortunately, every time Lincoln moves its focus away from the amendment's passage it seems to slow to a crawl. There are many subplots running throughout the film's two-and-a-half hour run time, and far too many of them center around Lincoln's family life. Lincoln's strained relationships with his son and wife do little to provide new insight into his character and pull away focus from the more compelling half of the film. Sally Field's Mary Todd Lincoln particularly suffers: her overblown hysterics rely too heavily on the audience's historical knowledge of the woman's mental troubles and eventually cause one to wince whenever she appears onscreen. The specificity of the slice of time Lincoln explores also can become a hindrance. The film's scope is focused, but also restricted, unable to fully draw on some of the other aspects of Lincoln's tenure like his Cabinet's internal struggles or a fully raging Civil War. As for the ending, yikes. In order to avoid taking the obvious path Lincoln instead takes a far inferior one, continuing for several maddeningly pointless scenes beyond it's natural conclusion.*

   Lincoln is a fine film, but it never rises above what you'd expect it to be. Steven Spielberg remains an eminently talented director, but his most recent work does little to counter arguments he's now operating on auto-pilot. Lincoln is standard Spielberg in "prestige" mode.The camera captures sweeping visuals, the production design is gorgeous, the score is stirring. Yet we already know he's capable of doing that. We've seen it all before, and those hoping for something new or innovative will be left wanting. A better story and performances are the only things that distinguish this film from last year's mediocre War Horse; in both cases the style and direction is solid, polished, and unexciting.

   Lincoln is a good film. It just could have been a great one.

Seriously. Just end the f**king movie here.

*If, on the other hand, Lincoln had included an unannounced post-credits sequence that revealed Lincoln had faked hi death in order to better murder some vampires I think we'd all think of it as the apotheosis of the medium.