On Politics and Lincoln

You wait years for a film about slavery to come along, and then two comes at once. Earlier this month Tarantino’s Django Unchained and now Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. However, only one of these films is about slavery and that is the latter.

Despite criticisms of ignoring the black point of view, Spielberg’s film rolls on and rightly so; it is a beautifully crafted piece of work and is a film about Abraham Lincoln, a white president with a white cabinet. Despite some early civil war scenes Lincoln is a film that plays out in the small back rooms and basements of unassuming Washington buildings. A hunt for votes to pass an anti slavery amendment is the main narrative thread and from this Spielberg pulls a gripping story and creates a masterful film.

Lincoln is a film very much about politics and at times feels like a nineteenth century The West Wing (1999 - 2006), as we see Lincoln and his cabinet unafraid to tangle with the opposition, winning votes by any means possible. The film neither dumbs down nor isolates audiences and credit for this goes to Tony Kushner’s script that takes an otherwise heavy political story and turns it into an accessible mainstream film. Spielberg refuses to idolise his characters, even Lincoln and this only wins the director more plaudits. A director that can, like few others balance films such as Lincoln with the more mainstream, such as War of the Worlds (2005). The grey scale cinematography brings Lincoln’s world to life and the film is perhaps the most noteworthy of all its recent awards competitors.