An extraordinary film!

If you haven't seen the new Steven Spielberg film "Lincoln", run, don't walk, to your nearest theatre and see it - NOW. Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of the immortal 16th President is nothing short of astonishing. He becomes the character so completely that when you are watching the movie, you feel as if you are in the same room with the great President Lincoln, and you get a feel for the very human, flesh and blood man who we tend to put up on a marble pedestal as something of an American saint, but he was a very real person, who laughed, cried, became angry, impatient, depressed and who was famed for telling stories that, well, sometimes drove people a little crazy, but people were obviously willing to forgive the President his tendency to do this. I found myself mourning the loss of this great man at the end of the film even more than I would normally reading a book about him, and for the first time, I felt like someone captured the President Lincoln I got to know so well in reading an outstanding biography of him called "A. Lincoln" by Ronald C. White. Several years ago, on the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, a bunch of new books about him came out, and this was among them. It read like a very good novel and I was fascinated and enthralled to get inside this man and see how very real, human, vulnerable and yet extraordinarily steely this man was. This was the same President Lincoln I spent two and a half hours in the theatre with watching the movie. It is breathtaking, a masterwork of the mature Steven Spielberg, better known for splashy and popular blockbuster movies. This is quite unlike anything else he has ever done, and I have seen most of his movies over the past 40 years that he's been entertaining us. It also could not be a more timely film. Our modern day Congress is in serious gridlock, as was the Congress in the movie, jostling for votes in order to pass the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. The verbal warfare among the legislators feels like we are seeing that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

A testy and impatient President Lincoln is struggling to get the amendment passed before the war comes to an end and before the South is re-admitted to the Union because he is well aware that they will block the ratification of it. There is a scene, certainly one of the most memorable, where the President reaches his limit of tolerance with members of his cabinet and some Congressmen and stands up, pulling himself to his full height, and announces, "I am the President of the United States, clothed in immense power! You will procure me those votes!" referring to the votes he needs in Congress to pass the amendment he has worked so very hard to get done before war's end. There is a moment of silence as the weight of his words is absorbed by the people in the room, and it took my breath away to see the President that I have spent my entire life revering losing his patience and letting people know of it in no uncertain terms. Brilliant moment. This is a movie that has Oscar buzz all over it. Daniel Day-Lewis IS President Lincoln in this movie, so much so that you forget that an actor is portraying him. Sally Field is his long suffering wife Mary, David Strathairn is Secretary Seward, Tommy Lee Jones is an irascible, funny and crusty Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, an ardent abolitionist. There are many other actors and literally hundreds of speaking roles, many of them very small, but they do so very much to clue us in to people's reactions to the President or to the events surrounding the story of the film, the passage of the 13th amendment in the closing months of the Civil War. I am guessing that the following categories will receive Oscar nominations for this extraordinary film: Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Supporting Actress (Sally Field), Supporting Actor (either David Strathairn or Tommy Lee Jones), Director (Steven Spielberg), Film, Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), Art Direction (Curt Beech, David Crank, Leslie McDonald), Costume (Joanna Johnston), Makeup (Joe Badiali et al.), Sound (Mark Agostino et al.), Lighting, Screenplay (Tony Kushner), Film Score (John Williams). If it wins all 13 categories, it will surpass the 11 Oscars won by "Ben-Hur" back in the late 1950s. It should win quite a few of these awards, and I would not be surprised if it takes home at least a half dozen statuettes if not more. This film is without a doubt the single best piece of filmmaking from the stellar career of Steven Spielberg and one can only hope that he turns his attention to more serious film subjects like this again. American history is so full of fascinating stories and there is no shortage of great books from which to draw. The Civil War has provided us with decades of great movie making and it will probably continue to do so. There are so many great books that would make fantastic movies. There are so many colorful characters like the abolitionist John Brown that are great fodder for film. I only wish I had a way to suggest good books to Hollywood that they may not be aware of that I think would be extraordinary stories. But for now, I strongly urge you all to go see the incredible movie "Lincoln". Do not miss it, and be sure to read the book on which it is based, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's available at Amazon.com, your local bookseller and at your public library!