Lincoln

Saw Lincoln yesterday, and am still trying to articulate why the film had such an impact for me.  I mean, ok, this is far from the first film about Abraham Lincoln.  It's not even the first really good film, with really good actors in the lead.  So, why did this one particularly bring me to tears and have me cheering?

One reason, I think, is because the film humanized someone who is on the verge of being one of America's saints -The Great Emancipator, Honest Abe.  Funny thing, the film humanized him without in any way diminishing him.  Willingly or no, Abraham Lincoln was a great man, and the film emphasized that much of his greatness was wrapped up in his...humanity.  His tendency to drive the people around him crazy with stories, his love for his sons (even when the relationship with Robert was so much stiffer and more awkward than the one with young Tad), the deep complexity of his relationship with Mary Todd, his own continual wrestling with sorrow...all of these things in the midst of leading the nation in a war that they emphatically didn't want, struggling to cajole and coerce a recalcitrant Congress to pass an amendment that I can't imagine a world without, that few others wanted at the time, that nearly broke the Union, and that extended the War for four more months and killed thousands more young men for the sake of its passage.  When Lincoln was presented with the choice to bring the Richmond delegates to Washington and end the War in a week without ending slavery OR push for passage of the amendment and delay the end of the war for a hope that few, if any, believed was possible, I found myself thinking, "God, I NEVER want that job."  Even knowing what Lincoln chose, I watched, spellbound, as he wrestled with his convictions and the certainty that more would die, the weight of those deaths bearing down on him even as the weight of those lives did.

There was also the way that the film felt so very current, the way so many arguments made by people around Lincoln and by Lincoln himself could have been made in Washington today.  So many died. So many suffered, and we have those today who threaten to drag us back into that howling madness, who rattle their sabers and say that Civil War is coming and who will never pick up a gun themselves, but would rather throw their sons (my son!) and their grandchildren as living sacrifices into the fires of war than stand and use the process laid out by our founders to build our more perfect union (and, yes, I am having fun with rhetoric, why do you ask?).

Then again, the film caught the bare hint of the drama that became Reconstruction.  Only Lincoln could have truly merged the country after the war, and his loss resulted in another hundred years of suffering and anger on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.  I hear otherwise logical and respectable individuals become frothing maniacs on subjects that were last argued in the heat of battle over 100 years ago.  I wish he had been there to argue and cajole and coerce us into truly settling our grievances with one another, or perhaps just setting us on the path to that instead of leaving us alone in our wrath and our pain to try and bind wounds that failed to heal properly.  I found myself grieving, no only for his personal loss, but for the lasting damage that was done to the country with his death.  Damage that has even now only imperfectly healed.

This film hit me on personal and intellectual levels.  It provided that most rare and wonderful of theatrical experiences - full engagement.  It goes on my short list of Must-See Movies.