The New Republic

Serendipity? Prescience? I posted the following just before becoming aware of the film, and I won't resist sharing here what I wrote two days after Obama's re-election: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-sleeper/the-beauty-in-that-video-_b_2101938.html I hope I may note that for most of the past year I was among Obama's harsher critics from the left-liberal side, contra the apologetics for him by Jonathan Chait, then at TNR, and by Fareed Zakaria and Ezra Klein. But, as I say in this recent post, I do believe that he's had a Lincoln moment, that he's more-than-well aware of his failings, and that he's determined to carry on for History's sake, more than for his own. We'll see soon enough. And if I've been wrong, I'll say so.

- jimsleeper

November 14, 2012 at 1:47am

Good review, and useful. I think I'll see it. More like this, please, Mr. Thomson.

- Curran1

November 14, 2012 at 9:24am

"That peril has been avoided." Are there others? Why the foreboding tone? In my small southern community, the ugly, racist campaign signs were taken down before dawn the morning following the election. Obama was re-elected and his legitimacy is no longer questioned, not even down here. "Being a nobleman or a saint is not enough in a leader. We need someone who can stoop to getting the job done, and wheedling the necessary votes in any way it takes." Obama is not Lincoln. Or FDR. Or LBJ. Or Jefferson, for that matter. Obama may not play the parlor game, or drink whiskey, play cards, and smoke cigars, or twist arms with political threats. That was their way, not Obama's, as much as we'd like to believe our presidents are mere actors on a stage.

- rayward

November 14, 2012 at 2:42pm

A dissenting opinion: The story tells of the political machinations immediately leading up to the passage of the 13th Amendment. That's just about all it tells. Those machinations are both difficult to follow as presented in the movie (at least for me, I confess), and seem beside the point, at least at this level of detail -- except that we are to take note of the political nature of politics and the pragmatic nature of politicians, even Lincoln, all of which is obvious. We don't really gain a sense of Lincoln as a master tactician -- as his tactical maneuverings are difficult to understand clearly -- or as a great leader. We see neither the unvarnished man of his time -- who said racist things and never publicly voiced support for the radical Republican agenda of full equality -- nor the morally and intellectually restless thinker who admirably came around to his overriding commitment to abolition and probably more than merely glimpsed the justice of full equality as well. The story of Lincoln is a story about getting from here to there, against the odds, and it's not told at all in this movie. The scope is too narrow and focus too granular. This, no doubt, is seen as necessary for a feature-length film, as opposed to a mini-series, but I have my doubts. Instead of part of Team of Rivals, they should have chosen Eric Foner's book The Firey Trial as their inspiration, which is really about this issue. Meanwhile, this eminently quotable figure says little in the movie that is memorable -- except for a joke about a painting of George Washington in a bathroom -- and there is little to convey his unique intelligence and sensitivity, or, in fact, just how he processed the enormous conflicts he faced. We are *told* that he is beloved, but we don't see why. "Lincoln's" Lincoln remains aloof, despite his tiresome propensity to tell little stories or fables every two seconds rather than answer a question directly, as though he were a prophet, profession-bound to speak in riddles. We never see him confide in or converse forthrightly with anyone, though he must have. When he has something interesting to say -- his defense of the emancipation proclamation, for example -- the script has him give a torturous, verbose explanation that won't just bore children but will confound or irritate adults who are trying to follow it, even those somewhat versed in constitutional law and history. The movie is praised for its fearless wordiness, but the words aren't so great -- Lincoln asks in a heart-and-soul moment in the film, with Kushner-esque incoherence, "Do you think we choose to be born?" -- and I suspect that much of those words will drift over viewers' heads anyway, as we are led to the dramatic, cinematic, Capra-esque showdown -- the vote tally in the House, in which the lead opponent, played here as the American incanration of Scrooge, is (spoiler alert) defeated with the help of last-minute aw-shucks decency, the excessively meek finding their courage, and a bit of -- ooo, isn't this interesting! -- lawyerly evasion from the president himself. Besides all that, we don't have a real sense of the place or the time. We expect great things from "Steven." We expect the Capitol facade to not look like CGI, we expect the White House facade to not look like a downsized set, we expect interior lighting at night to look historically accurate (darker and yellower), we expect to get a sense of life on the streets as well as glimpses of the battlefield, and a sense of Lincoln's life as president. For example, he entertained long lines of ordinary citizens seeking favors and patronage, what he refers to in the movie as his "popular bath." So, let's see that, instead of just getting one little offhanded line about it. And we might, as suggested by a New York Times op-ed today, expect to get a sense of the lives and attitudes of black Americans in this drama that's about them. Except for the very beginning, the movie's black characters are relegated to the roles of saintly extras. Maybe I was just in a bad mood. I've been told as much. But I can't help but think that this is yet one more missed opportunity by Hollywood to tell the American story in a compelling and real way.

- JakeH

November 14, 2012 at 6:34pm

Jake you're about the best movie critic around here. You've got me intrigued. I'm soon to see Lincoln. If I find you after we'll have a cyber beer and I'll tell you what I think.

- basman

November 15, 2012 at 12:09pm

Agreed -- Jake, you have a real gift for reading films. I thought your analysis of that dumb final chase scene at the end of Argo was pretty much what I had thought in a casual impressionistic way, but you laid it out it with far more detail and conviction that I could have done (and with suggestions how it could have been improved).

- ironyroad

November 15, 2012 at 10:30pm

Thanks basman! On reflection, and after perusing some of my Lincoln literature, I'm probably being a bit too harsh. The portrayal of Lincoln the man is, on the whole, a decent and historically informed one. As with Obama today, contemporaries sometimes said that it was hard to get a read on Lincoln who, despite his often ingratiating manner, was not seen as an open book. I think my quibbles are still worthy, though. The folksy yarn thing seems overdone, and, when the movie does, ahistorically and for purposes of drama only, have him speak candidly to a couple of telegraph operators, his Kushner-scribed musings in that scene are, to my ear, lame and anachronistic, however clever. I'm referring in part to the bit about Euclidean geometry, where Lincoln refers to the principle that those things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Yes, Lincoln is known to have studied Euclid, but I doubt that study informed his views on human equality. That equation, a bit specious I think, has a 21st century, postmodern ring to it. Lincoln would have couched his leanings on that question in terms of natural law or God, as he actually did. And math is no substitute for experience, for encountering, say, black Union soldiers and being confronted with and moved by their sacrifice and humanity, as he was. It's a neat bit of writing, but I doubt Lincoln said or thought anything like it, and he said and wrote a lot of good stuff. Day-Lewis is good, though, and I will say that Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens is uncontroversially awesome. My main problem stands: I continue to feel that the movie, with its tight focus on relatively obscure maneuverings in the immediate run-up to the 13th Amendment -- near the tail-end of a wonderfully rich and complicated and, I think, edifying and inspiring story -- misses the historical sweep of the times and the nature of Lincoln's role in it. In 1858, just a few years before the outbreak of war, the editors of the Chicago Tribune, strongly antislavery, had written that no living man would see its demise in America. Its total end, without compensation or any agreed plan for what to do next, was, as Lincoln said in the second inaugural, "astounding." And yet, when the movie opens, Lincoln has already delivered the Gettysburg Address (the greatest speech in American history), there are black Union soldiers (what's that about?), and the emancipation proclamation has been delivered (whoa, slow down Nellie). My thought was, sheesh, we're skipping right past all the juicy parts, all the signposts pointing toward that "astounding" result, as Lincoln, always the thoughtful and measured political moderate, let himself be pushed by radicals and the force and rush of unprecedented events toward the great aims and results that would define his legacy and make him America's most revered historical figure. As we would say now, Lincoln "evolved" on the issue, as he shepherded, as best he could, events toward what only now seems like the preordained, obvious outcome. We get a taste of that in the movie, but only, I think, a taste. There was a feast to be had.

- JakeH

November 15, 2012 at 10:58pm

Why this obsessions with a film? Critics have been writing as if this one move will change or subvert history, it won't. Those who know the historical Lincoln will not see this movie for its historical accuracy, and those who don't know the historical Lincoln won't miss anything.

- arnon1

November 17, 2012 at 12:24am

Mr. Thomson is sophomoric. He fails to appreciate that people aged differently in the nineteenth century than they do in the twenty-first and for that reason dwells on pictures and ages too much.

- mjhill

November 17, 2012 at 3:08am

A movie in the old Hollywood style. Brilliant. I don't know exactly what the historical Lincoln was like, but much of the movie rang true to the Civil War history I've been improving upon ever since the New York Times launched its Disunion blog. If there's any problem with the movie, it's that it's very process-oriented and tells the story of the Civil War by telescoping on the arcana of one major debate. Still, that debate is the Big Issue of slavery and what to do with it--as "Alexander Stephens" says, it's the whole war. Even if you don't know who's who and could care less about the political intrigue to get a 2/3 majority, you see the drama of the entire political system played through the fulcrum of what would become the greatest political moment of American history. You see horse-trading, the spoils system, and general 19th century shadiness culminate in the most consequential amendment in American history. You see the radical (liberal) Republicans fighting for the 20th century notions we now recognize in the Civil Rights Movement and biding their time to make this one compromise that Lincoln requires of them. You see the delicate political theater that is required to get conservatives and Democrats on board, and you at once understand the gravity of the whole process of waging war on half the country while running a sclerotic federal government with few formalized powers. If nothing else, this movie will at least become what "Glory" was to me in high school--the stylized history we get to see and discuss in the classroom. It's all at a higher level and pedagogical in its own way, so it's probably a better movie to teach. And, of course, it should provide strong cultural support to end the notion that the war was fought over states' rights. The war was fought over slavery, with the radicals holding out for (and eventually committing to paper) full racial equality. The border states stayed in the Union because of greater commitment to the principle of the thing and vastly different political and economic circumstances from your South Carolinas, but it's abundantly clear that the Confederate states seceded because they felt slavery would be threatened under Lincoln. And in that last meeting with the Confederate VP, Lincoln negotiates with the upper hand, telling them that by seceding and fighting a losing battle, they ultimately moved the country to the position where ending slavery could be sold as a military necessity and then slowly reframed as the justification for the hundreds of thousands of war dead. This is no War of 1812 status quo ante bellum. There's a new country that's born as a result.

- chaitless

November 17, 2012 at 10:33am

Supposed to see it this later aft.

- basman

November 17, 2012 at 1:16pm

jimskeeper. Welcome to the club that has few members at tnr. Walter Lipmann has been turning in his grave for well over a decade.

- drofnats1

November 17, 2012 at 1:35pm

Yet to see it but: ...Why this obsessions with a film? Critics have been writing as if this one move will change or subvert history, it won't. Those who know the historical Lincoln will not see this movie for its historical accuracy, and those who don't know the historical Lincoln won't miss anything... Interesting it is to live in Canada and observe the raging American conversation about topics many, and not the least race, the civil war, slavery, the Constitution, the presidency and Lincoln, among many many. We in Canada, a more benign, sleepy, less dramatic country, with residual constitutional power located in the federal government under the head of power known as "Peace, Order and Good Government," don't have these great national conversations, save perhaps from time to time on the issues Quebec poses for us. Movies themselves are in America part of the cultural air Americans breathe, reflectors and creators of the culture, the national sensibility, reflecting, adding to, inflecting the American conversation. So when an iconic director makes an apparently epical movie dealing with the confluence of such great American themes in a serious, large and seemingly eminently praise worthy way, how could there be anything but an "obsession" with it?

- basman

November 17, 2012 at 1:46pm

Rained out by a traffic jam on my way to meet my wife to see it. Will try to see it tomnorrow.

- basman

November 17, 2012 at 4:42pm

thanks JakeH. I am inferring you read "Team of Rivals", which is actually the only Lincoln-centric book I have read. Had just read Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker, which left me still undecided to see the film, mostly because he had to insert the point that Liam Neeson was the first choice, and why not Viggo Mortenson. The trailers have no allure in part because DDL does not seem to BE Lincoln. I am going to direct that film money to Caro's fourth volume on LBJ.

- K2K

November 17, 2012 at 6:20pm

fwiw basman, I would recommend 1993 film "Gettysburg" to a Canadian. Better if you first read Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels". Great insight into the motivations of the men who fought the defining battle of American history, and how close it came to turning out very different. Eternal thanks to Colonel (at Gettysburg) Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine.

- K2K

November 17, 2012 at 6:34pm

Thanks K2K. I haven't seen Gettysburg or heard of The Killer Angels. I'll make it a point to see the first and will check out the second.

- basman

November 17, 2012 at 7:19pm

A few years ago I bought Barry Schwartz's "Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory," but never got around to reading it. Now I want to read it, and I can't find the damn book.

- ironyroad

November 17, 2012 at 7:51pm

basman: the film is based on Shaara's book, "Killer Angels" which is mostly history of the Battle of Gettysburg. I read it after seeing the film. This was three years after Ken Burns remarkable 1990 eleven hour story "The Civil War", Almost 20 years now, but I have watched the film again. No greater story of our Civil War than the emergence of a Classics professor from Bowdoin College as the Colonel of a mostly dispirited 20th Maine, in holding the far flank at Little Round Top on day 2. Perhaps one can better comprehend the former Confederate States by considering the mindset, the worldview, the concept of duty, in the tragedy known as Pickett's Charge on day 3. When you stand on that ground, you still feel the gasps of the ghost of the battle itself. oh. have been watching "Hidalgo" for the umpteenth time, firgot to post

- K2K

November 18, 2012 at 1:16am

I had a high school English teacher who made us watch Gettysburg the movie, and I've had a soft spot for it ever since. I'm sure he liked it because the hero of the film, Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels), was an English teacher.

- JakeH

November 18, 2012 at 1:38am

K2K, I suspect you might like -- if you don't know it already -- Carole Reardon's book "Pickett's Charge in History and Memory."

- ironyroad

November 18, 2012 at 2:05am

thanks irony, but Pickett's Charge embodied, to me, one of the worst outcomes ever to emerge from the convergence of so many of the human traits that always seem to lead to another, and another, ad inf, armed conflict. The three people who stimulated my curiosity after absorbing Ken Burns' 1990 epic were Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and Mary Chestnut. Not George Pickett. And, only Chamberlain has endured in my reading, and imagination. (I remind you my interest in literature is near zero :) But, I have read every Tom Clancy novel, in chronological order. Not too difficult a leap from Colonel Chamberlain and Tom Clancy's "Jack Ryan"

- K2K

November 18, 2012 at 9:45am

I took my 10 year old to see it today and he enjoyed it. What I am most struck with is how 150 years after these events we will have a black President in office. It will have so much resonance next year when Obama goes to Gettysburg as our President, and right now we have so many idiots in the south who still have learned nothing of what it is to be American. Anyone who petitions for secession deserves every bit of derision I can muster. As to the movie, the amendment did barely pass the House so I am not sure exactly how much embellishment there was, I am sure there was a great deal of vote buying. And what can I say, I enjoyed the movie. I found the physical resemblance of so many characters to the actors portraying them laudable. JakeH is right, things were not as filthy and dingy as they really were but I don't need to see it to know that was how it was.

- blackton

November 18, 2012 at 4:11pm

maybe some of blackton's "...many idiots in the south who still have learned nothing of what it is to be American..." are still pissed that their ancestors who died at Gettysburg were first buried there, but then a post-Lincoln, and very vengeful USA dug up the bodies and relocated them South. It was fifty years before any former Confederate state was allowed to even place one memorial on the battlefield of Gettysburg. All Obama has done is forever to embed "America is Racist" in what remains of our national dialog. Enough already.

- K2K

November 18, 2012 at 5:41pm

Blackton, you must have an exceptional son. I can't imagine any 10 year old kid in the world sitting through this excruciating exercise in boredom. I know we're supposed to like it and I don't have the will to get down to the kind of analysis Jake presents in his first post, but I was unengaged, kept looking at my watch, was put intensely off by all the high minded, stilted talk, talk, talk, nobody talks like that, the piousesness, the lack of inner drama in Lincoln himself, Daniel Day Lewis without energy or spark listlessly turning Lincoln into a caricature of ostensibly passive world weariness without coveying the inner drama of that, except when he gets mad, slams his hand on the desk and tells his lieutenants to get the damn votes, and except in the one angry shouting quarrel between himself and Sally Field. However ernest and well intentioned, what a soporific, bromidic, pious, draggy, listless film I in the main found this to be.

- basman

November 18, 2012 at 7:47pm

Alright basman, thanks for the validation. Maybe I wasn't just in a bad mood when I saw it, because I too was bored and annoyed. It's slow and "cramped," as Anthony Lane said, without being subtle. It's wordy without being literary. It's a bad mix of Spielbergian corniness on the one hand, and tedious, often context-free explication of historical detail on the other. It's yet more proof that today's supposed masters of the craft have lost sight of the basics and don't really know what they're doing, which is my running thesis these days until proved wrong. Yes, I too found it difficult to connect with Lincoln the character. As I suggested in the second post, his aloofness may be an historically informed choice, but it's nonetheless fatal for the movie. Movies that are boring are boring because they are deficient as character-driven drama. A good movie, like a skilled con-artist, expertly pushes buttons and extracts, even from intelligent, sane adults resistant to button-pushing, an emotional investment. A good movie works this magic effortlessly, so that we don't notice it or question it (which ruins the spell) -- we're happy to be manipulated. In Lincoln, we don't get a real feel for the man or his times or his momentous occasion -- we're just sort of told and instructed, usually in a ham-handed fashion. We are left to fill in the emotional blanks with our preexisting Lincoln worship (or, maybe, as I've now heard from many quarters, Obama worship). Lincoln's spell evidently worked on some, maybe because for some, it couldn't go wrong, but the movie has very little to say to a skeptic or, perhaps, a Canadian, or even to those like myself -- goose-bump-prone would-be cheerleaders looking for a solid, clear-eyed cinematic brief on behalf of Lincoln's greatness. I just saw another lengthy historical drama about the defining moments in a nation's history, which I enjoyed a great deal more than Lincoln. The nation is Denmark, and the movie is called (not very memorably) "A Royal Affair." It got decent but not glowing reviews. It's billed as just another sumptuous period romance, and it is that, but it's a good deal more than that. It's the apparently true story of how Denmark became modern around the time of the Enlightenment, when radical ideas were changing the world on both sides of the Atlantic, turning it into the world we recognize today. It might be called, "How the West Was Won." I know nothing of Danish history, but I'm led to understand that the basic story and historical figures, as with Lincoln, may be the stuff of domestic legend. A British girl is married off to the young Danish king. The girl is an ardent admirer of all things Enlightenment -- the philosophy, the arts -- and she hopes that her husband will be too. He's not. He's horribly immature, outwardly crass, and plain weird. He's probably a mental case. One early moment among many that sets the stage, and effortlessly extracts that emotional investment: At a party, the queen, a skilled musician, is flawlessly performing a baroque piece on an early piano. Her facial expression as she plays is a perfect bit of acting -- without pretensions or ostentation, she's simply pleased with the elegance of the music, her ability to play it correctly, the aesthetic and intellectual beauty of the moment. The king, increasingly irritated by his inability to get it, crushes that moment when he demands that she stop and derides the performance as annoying noise -- "clang, clang, clang!" The other man soon comes on the scene -- a medical doctor who, in his spare time, writes anonymous essays in the spirit of Voltaire. As the freshly hired court physician, he mentors the king and becomes his only friend. The king, it turns out, is not a bad kid, but rather a weak and troubled one. The doctor induces the king to assert his power against the council of ministers who actually run the country and who represent the recalcitrant old guard of nobility and church. As one of the first orders of business, the king, who likes gallivanting in Copenhagen but is struck by the filthiness of the city, orders at the doctor's urging that waste collection be increased, an expenditure to be paid for by a little tax on the rich -- a levy on the pensions of noblemen. As the king says, he wants to "declare war on shit," which is really the doctor's battle cry too, and the battle cry of the restless Enlightenment impulse he represents. Much else follows. The doctor is not only confidant to the king but intimate friend of the queen, which is the trouble. The affair is neither tawdry nor tiresome in the manner of melodramas that yell the alleged passion at you with lame music and futile volume and stock expressions of movie romance even as the characters, no matter how sexy, are unconvincing in their attraction and connection. Rather, the affair is natural and genuine. These two are terrific specimens, great to look at for sure, but it's engrossing because you like them and believe them and are pleasingly suckered by the magic of movies into feeling as though a lot's at stake. The doctor's worthy political morality undergoes acute challenges, none so sad as the sea of angry faces -- those of the common people he defended and helped liberate -- calling for his head, and he with no god or church to comfort him, even in the proverbial foxhole, other than the strength of his then-fresh and generally disapproved convictions. I read one review that called the movie an Advanced Placement bodice ripper. Cute. Another complained that the movie is old-fashioned. Good. Europeans (and American TV people) seem better than American filmmakers these days at producing classy Hollywood-style entertainment of the old school -- solid button-pushers with heart and head, except with less of that ubiquitous American ingredient, corn syrup. See also Borgen, the terrific TV series about modern Danish politics -- a Euro-West Wing without the fussiness. (Borgen hasn't been released in the U.S. market. The European DVDs are available on Amazon, however, as are the region-free DVD players that are necessary to watch them.) Here's stuff that's admirably straight and unpretentious, that's fun and edifying, that works along two dimensions that are normally seen as opposing forces -- those of escapism on the one hand and literary truth-telling on the other. They're seen as opposing forces because truth is theoretically what you're escaping from when you indulge in mere entertainment. And yet, the best cinematic truth-telling is also entertaining, and the best entertainment is honest and convincing. Hollywood used to get that, at least a little more than they seem to today. I don't know what they're doing now.

- JakeH

November 19, 2012 at 4:18am

I'll never learn. Just lost a lengthy comment by a mistaken touch on my IPad. I was saying, in brief reprise, I thought your first two paragraphs put well problems this movie has. I haven't seen the Danish things you mention but will look out for them and I appreciate your mentioning and describing them. I also said how bemused I was by the sheer disparity between my impatient frustration with the movie as I walked out of it just as it was ending on another, the final, high minded speech causing me to tear out my inner hair, the outer ones quite non existent, and the audience applauding. I noted the same disparity on checking MRQE and seeing the list of loving reviews with a few intelligent thumbs down like stones in the critical shoe. I guess aesthetic appreciation is subjective but I just couldn't get over or understand the applause. For all the lavish production--the aesthetics of drab, apparent meticulous historical detail and recreation, and assemblage of acting talent, the movie so clearly to me didn't work or jell--and I blame a lot of that on Kushner who just talks way too much in his plays. (I knew I was going to have trouble when Lincoln spoke to the two black soldiers right after the first battle, all battle no blood, and the second one started in on equal pay and the need for a number of black commanding officers.) My theory is that the audience conflated Lincoln's stratospheric high mindedness and elaborate cinematic get up with art and got swept up in the first mistaking it for the second, somewhat like not seeing the artless forest for all the effect-full trees. Finally, I think I've mentioned this before but I watch some TMC up here in the frigid north, and marvel at what good and accessible stories with interesting characters many older movies are comprised of.

- basman

November 19, 2012 at 7:26am

Enjoyed your review, JakeH, and agreed with a lot of it, but I still found myself sucked into the Lincoln movie. I took my daughter yesterday and found that Spielberg managed to manipulate me plenty--I cried when that amendment got passed, and a few other times after that, too. And I found myself drawn into the machinations--the sausage-making--of getting the amendment passed. Spielberg also deftly showed the cost of the war, with the dead men on the battle field, limbs being thrown into pits, and legless men. Where I do agree with you is that it didn't much show Lincoln. I think what the subject needed was the John Adams treatment of the PBS mini-series. Then maybe we could have gotten the measure of the man and his times. I'm dying to go to the Danish movie but I'm assuming the sex scenes will be too much for a thirteen-year-old girl (that's my daughter, not me)?

- MOLLYSIMON

November 19, 2012 at 4:34pm

Looking forward to seeing 'Lincoln' but I do find fascinating the varying takes on the movie. The fact that it wasn't wider in it's scope with regards to Lincoln himself, the events that preceded the constitutional amendment, etcetera, etcetera. It reminds me a lot about all of the varying opinions and questioning of authenticity when Speilberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' came out. There were plenty of D-Day veterans who thought too much artistic freedom was taken with regards to the beach landing and amount of carnage. Yet the veterans they interviewed for opposing movie reviews were veterans of other beach landings that weren't the focus of the movie. I guess with most historically grounded / premised movies such as 'Lincoln' there will inevitably be folks who have issues with what was missed or not included or that there was too much dialog or not enough action or the buttons were too shiny. Aside from glaring mistakes, one can expect certain anachronisms to creep in to period pieces. I will say this...if anyone thinks that 'Lincoln' was or might be too boring and long in dialogue, they need only watch 'Tree of Life' to be reminded that there is always a movie out there that is more infuriating, slower and duller than watching paint dry.

- singlspeed

November 19, 2012 at 5:29pm

Singlespeed, couldn't agree more about Tree of Life. It took a major act of my will simply not to walk out of it.

- basman

November 19, 2012 at 7:06pm

Doubleplus validation on the Tree of Life, people. I was visibly agitated throughout when I had to watch it with a group! For the most part, they were all moved by it, so it was a major act of will not to burst out laughing at all of the nonsense in the discussion afterwards.

- chaitless

November 19, 2012 at 10:00pm

Molly, I wouldn't say that A Royal Affair is inappropriate for a 13-year-old girl, but I wasn't really watching it for that. I think there was only one actual sex scene, which was tasteful, brief, darkly lit, not graphic. I think it's meant for a wide audience, despite its R rating. Of course, I find the rating system perverse. Skyfall is rated PG-13, even though a female character we'd invested in -- the Bond girl, a lady in distress relying on Bond to save her, and whom Bond relies on to reach the villain -- is unceremoniously killed for our amusement without so much as a twinge of regret from Bond. He even has a sickening line meant to highlight his misogynistic callousness. The villain had put a glass of scotch on the girl's head in a game of William Tell. When the villain, not aiming for the glass, guns the girl down, causing the glass to fall to the ground, Bond's only reaction is to lament the "waste of a good scotch." That's a villain's line! Because only an evil fuck would say it! The girl's death is barely registered -- no bullet impacts, as this is PG-13 -- except that we see her lifeless body hanging forward from her restraints without anyone paying attention, and her part of the picture is through. Forgive the R-rated language, but this is some fucked-up shit. I've seen every Bond picture, and I enjoy them (some more than others, of course), and Bond's attitude toward women has never been what we would call enlightened, but this is a new level of nastiness. And this trash -- which is generally tedious -- gets rave reviews and a kid-friendly rating. Anyway, sorry for ranting.

- JakeH

November 20, 2012 at 1:25am

p.s. Molly, I agree with you about the Adams miniseries, which was really outstanding. I found myself thinking, "Now, *this* is how we should all learn history!" And I also found myself thinking that Lincoln could benefit from the Adams treatment, albeit in a condensed, feature-length version. I don't buy that it's not possible. Movies are capable of tackling the larger sweep of history. Any movie you could plausibly call an "epic" would serve as an example. (Lincoln is decidedly *not* an epic, some advertising claims notwithstanding.) Maybe it would have to be a bit longer than Lincoln, but, if done well, it would feel shorter.

- JakeH

November 21, 2012 at 12:42am