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Interpreting historical records with sound logic and a clarity of motivation that doesn't purport hard data, Kushner's script implicitly examines its own necessary liberties by investigating the very act of interpretation within the law and one's public duty to uphold it, deftly balancing Lincoln's high-wire act of acquiring the necessary voting majority with his own personal tumult (as expressed by an alternative fiery and internalized, altogether flawless Daniel Day-Lewis) following the deaths of two of his sons and wife Mary Todd's (a tremendous Sally Field, at once charged and crumbling) ensuing mental instability. John Williams' comparatively minimalist score compliments Spielberg's images (Janusz KamiĆski's restrained, poetic lighting schemes add even greater subtlety to this morally exploratory work) without telegraphing emotion, but it's the spoken words of the cast that add the most music to this affair: from Tommy Lee Jones and David Strathairn to James Spader and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, there isn't a weak link to be found, and through them Kushner's writing plays as both quotidian and poetic. A work of immense personal and political significance, as enamored with a great man's limitations and downfalls as his strengths and triumphs, the accomplishments of the past and the difficulties of the future, Lincoln bears witness to a master film artist in perfect form, as essential an entry in Spielberg's catalog as his most popular blockbusters and heralded epics.
A final note, and spoilers ahoy: there's been enough of a brouhaha about the film's concluding scenes - particularly the purported exploitation of children during such - that I feel compelled to comment. As one who recently lost a parent, the suggestion that portraying such a loss through the eyes of a child is unto itself in poor taste or can only amount to callous manipulation, is, to be blunt, utter horseshit, and probably comes mostly from the same delusional cynics who'd rather have seen the assassination itself than the personal fallout, culminating in a gently heartbreaking, wholly earned Christlike idolization and what strikes me as one of the great image fades the medium has ever seen; it wasn't until the third time I say the film that I noticed Abraham's son Robert (Gordon-Levitt) is also by his side in death, and the personal effect this had remains simply beyond words. Don't listen for a moment to Sam Yell Jackson's diatribes (I like the man, but the use of Twitter as a platform just begs to be mocked; apparently, he didn't detect the tragic irony in those final words, "I suppose it's time to go, although I would rather stay."), Steven: Lincoln is a masterpiece.
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