Movie Review: Lincoln

The phenomenal Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln with the immersive, invested method acting, only he is capable of. This is acting at its finest.

It is chilling to find an actor play a character with such impeccability where every little mannerism is taken into account and every little run of words carefully practiced.

Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln is one of his most audacious projects till date. The expectations about such a film are just too great. Spielberg simply ignores those expectations and in doing that transcends them.

Lincoln covers the final four months of Lincoln's life, focusing on the President's efforts in January 1865 to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the United States House of Representatives.

For those who find politics too boring, this film isn’t much about politics. Even though, it talks about bills and amendments, the film ultimately shows the inner nature, flaws, weaknesses and workings of democracy’s greatest defender.

In adapting just a small part of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the 2005 bestseller about Lincoln and his Cabinet, screenwriter Tony Kushner blows the dust off history by investing it with flesh, blood and indomitable spirit.

Lincoln doesn’t spend time of flashbacks and backstory. It is all about forward thrust and urgency; verbal fireworks taking over visual stimulation. It is remarkable to see Lincoln using every single twist and turn in the book to pass the amendment and abolish slavery once and for all.

Spielberg, Kushner and Day-Lewis dare greatly in giving us this complex, conflicted portrait of a great American leader. The result, glitches and all, is a great American movie.