The Movie Lincoln: My Reaction

Thanksgiving evening I saw the movie Lincoln.  Here's my reaction...

I thought that, generally speaking, the movie successfully conveyed both the personality of Abraham Lincoln and his surroundings:  the tension involved in being a wartime president, a war inside his own country (as opposed to the trend the past several decades), and dealing with problematic elements within his own family life.  I thought that Daniel Day-Lewis, whose other movies I missed seeing, was wonderful and compelling in his portrayal of the sixteenth president.  On the other hand, Sally Field just looked like Sally Field pretending to be Mary Todd Lincoln.  Similarly, Tommy Lee Jones played firebrand Radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens with (unintentionally) humorous results.  The African-American characters in the movie were one-dimensional holy paragons of civil rights virtue, making pronouncements and speeches left and right.  I get it: the focus in Lincoln was the waning weeks of his first term when he was pushing Congress to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a provision that would abolish slavery nationwide. 

The politics of the time, combined with the winding down of the Civil War and various sometimes colorful and obstinate personalities, are woven into the movie around the central character: Abraham Lincoln, of course.  I enjoyed the experience and feel I learned some history as well.  The only problem with presentations like this, though, is in determining which parts were history and which parts were fictional embellishments...