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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: ‘Lincoln’ (M) **** and a half

IMAGINE today’s US as two polities, one where slavery provides the economic and social mainstay, the other implementing the principles of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. That’s a schism too dreadful to contemplate. 

Steven Spielberg’s historical blockbuster unfolds in Washington DC in January, 1865.

Both sides craved an end to an awful war, a major social upheaval that still resonates globally. But Lincoln knew unless Congress voted to adopt the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution before making peace, the pre-war status quo would be set in concrete.

The totally US-centric film has garnered 13 nominations in this year’s Academy Awards. Win or lose, they all have great merit. “Lincoln” is unlikely to pull Australian audiences like, for example, Harry Potter did. For me, it brought memories of Fin Crisp and Sol Encel in the Pol. Science department at Canberra University College. But such preparation is not an essential precursor for taking deep satisfactions from Spielberg’s film.

Casting Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is a nice conceit, an English actor rather than an American one. It’s a perceptive portrayal delivering deep emotional energy. Sally Field is powerful as Mary Lincoln. Tommy Lee Jones has never been better than as here playing congressman Thaddeus Stevens, a master of “sarcastic eloquence”.

Screenwriter Tony Kushner mixes recorded oratory with imagined domestic moments and polemics to give “Lincoln” a convincing verity in a film with qualities of a cinematic masterpiece.

At all cinemas

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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