Film Review | Lincoln

On my way to a much-needed toilet break following a screening of Steven Spielberg's heavily Oscar-nominated historical epic Lincoln, I happened to overhear a capsule review from a fellow cinema patron.

"Well, it's very nice... but it's not that exciting, is it?"

This old lady is after my job.

In fact, I'm going to struggle to find a pithier, more readable explanation of just how Spielberg's take on the final - and historically crucial - four months of Abraham Lincoln's political career unfolds on the big screen.

Once you take away Daniel Day-Lewis's predictably brilliant performance as the titular 19th century president (not that you'd want to) and look past its impeccable costumes and production design, what you're left with is a three-hour film about a constitutional amendment.

Working off of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (a non-fictional account of Lincoln's final presidential stretch), screenwriter Tony Kushner has the unenviable task of eking out a workable film out of the bureaucratic tangle Lincoln and his orbiting political associates had to cut through in order for the 13th Amendment to pass. This sounds like a dry piece of data until you realise what it actually signifies: the amendment proposes the complete abolition of slavery. To say that it was a controversial proposition would be an understatement so crass that it would verge on the blasphemous.

It was, after all, one of the causes of the American Civil War, during which we're introduced to Day-Lewis's Lincoln as Spielberg's camera sneaks up behind him, leisurely recounting a story to two black soldiers fresh from the battlefield.

His calm, raspy exterior - betraying his roots as a humble Kentucky country boy - seems to cast an effortless spell on his listeners.

But while one of the soldiers appears convinced by Lincoln's belief, echoed most resonantly in his perennial Gettysburg address, that equality for all will be assured sooner rather than later, his friend is sceptical... and recites the final notes of Lincoln's most famous speech back to him almost as a provocation to practise what he preaches.

It's a cameo portrait of what lies ahead for the embattled president; for in the talk-intensive couple of hours that follow, he'll have to convince a divided political world to go against some of the country's most fundamental precepts.

And though Lincoln's ultimate aim with abolishing slavery is motivated by a lofty humane impulse, his methods will have to fall on the suspicious side of 'practical' if he is to secure a majority for the fateful amendment.

Perhaps no director other than Spielberg could have executed a project like this with the requisite level of assured confidence. To say that it's talky would be another understatement, and in limiting the narrative to just four key months (January to April 1865), Spielberg and Kushner leave themselves very little wiggle-room in which to accommodate anything you'd typically associate with an audience-friendly period drama.

Even very real domestic angst is brought up only to recede into the (richly furnished) background just as soon as it appears. Sally Field's performance as Lincoln's long-suffering wife Mary Todd doesn't give us much to enjoy: except for when she hawkishly defends her husband from political adversaries, she's a shrill presence even when her complaints are fully justified.

A recurring grievance - and the only one of Mary Todd's complaints that actively guides the story - is her insistence that their son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) continues to study, and evades the war (which he's keen to partake in) so as to dodge the same fate of two of his deceased brothers. So follow a couple of scenes in which our titular president attempts - with worrying half-heartedness - to sway his son's opinion.

He fails, and the plot moves back to congress.

But though the raw matter is prosaic, the fire and ire of some of its key players is more than satisfying to savour, when it does arrive: and nowhere is it more fiercely in evidence than in Tommy Lee Jones's Thaddeus Stevens - the radical reformer out to abolish slavery, and who doesn't take to compromise lightly.

Jones does wearied, righteous anger better than most, and here he's got a noble cause to bolster his character with: keep your ears peeled for his use of 'nincompoop' - probably this film's equivalent of a climactic explosion in a Michael Bay-directed actioner.

(The rich panoply of political players that form both his friends and enemies in this vicious ring is made up of a number of character actors you'll immediately recognise - a reminder of the power Spielberg still wields in his world).

But make no mistake, despite its ensemble cast and masterfully lavish visual world - a dark, immersive visual palate courtesy of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski - the film is carried on Daniel Day-Lewis's trusty shoulders.

It's a wonderful, quietly seductive performance. Day-Lewis - who spent some years in unofficial retirement before being lured back into the profession by Martin Scorsese - is one of the few genuine actors we have left. Instead of churning out 'trademark' characters like most of his colleagues (who are more brands than genuine thespians) he disappears into the role - and I'm not just talking about his sandy grey-white hair.

He enables us to witness a rare thing: an oil-and-water mix of weariness and passion; of generosity and power; of idealism existing in an uneasy marriage with compromise.

Whatever your political leanings, you'll most likely emerge from Lincoln certain that there will never be another figure quite like him.

That, perhaps, is something. Unexciting, on the surface, as it may be.