Lincoln

Steven Spielberg – 2012 – USA

Spielberg is the power that bestrides the film world like a colossus.  His film Lincoln moves as a giant desert sphinx, disturbed from an ancient slumber, encircled by anxious birds, slouching towards us from Hollywood.  Its awesome, lumbering weight supports not only the burden of history, but of box-office, Oscars, humanitarian prizes, and the dreamy nostalgia of the American people.  Every majestic camera movement and composed frame, every hobbling footstep and grumble from method-star Daniel Day-Lewis, every note of John Williams’ momentous score all convey the most somber magnitude.  Trying to move beyond his status as the high-priest of schmaltz, Spielberg has in the past decade reverted back to his life-long goal to become a cross between Frank Capra and David Lean.  I suppose he succeeds as well as anyone, but I never thought this ambition was something we were so in need of, nor truly possible considering Spielberg’s weakness for sadistic violence safely couched in a veil of socially-relevant respectability.  In a world swimming with Spielberg imitators, Spielberg’s own films are no longer the special events they were decades ago, and it seems unlikely that he will ever produce supremely perfect works again on a par with Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).  Are his films bad now?  No.  But they are not what they once were.  Lincoln, for example, suffers from the Smithsonian syndrome of which Gore Vidal warned us.  Without knowing much about the film’s origins, it leaves me with no doubt that every detail and bit of dialogue is meticulously researched and as accurate as humanly possible, distractingly so.  And the tone is so reverent and regal that the scenes often seem like Disneyland animatronics not fully come to life.  In spite of all that, I do admire Spielberg’s eye for weathered character actors who are comfortably cast to type and always fun to watch; Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, Jackie Earle Haley, Hal Holbrook and even Walton Goggins appearing in his second major film in a year that’s sorta about slavery; the other being Tarantino’s Django Unchained.