Lincoln (2012)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, David Strathairn

Have I Seen it Before: I poured over Team of Rivals in the winter of 2012. This movie claims to be based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin tome (more on that in a bit), and I desperately wanted to get through it before seeing the movie. It was a weird time

Today (if you’ll note the publishing date of this review) that time feels both like it was ages ago and it was just yesterday.

Did I Like It: I think there is only one criticism to level against the movie, and it is a slight sliver of false advertising. Despite the credit given to the Goodwin book, the book is nearly 1000 pages, and the passing of the 13th Amendment—the main thrust of the film’s storyline—takes up an entire paragraph. It isn’t based on the book. As I recently indicated in my review of Selma (2014), film is often a poor substitute for true history. This film is barely based on the book. If you want that real history, go read Team of Rivals, as it is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the last ten years.

Now, that is all to say the film—when judged on the merits of being a film—is quite stellar. It didn’t make it into my list of favorite movies from the 2010s, but that is no sin. The story of passing the amendment gives Lincoln the film character an easily formable arc, while perhaps losing something of a true portrait of Lincoln the man and leader. 

The film is surprising funny at times, and heartbreaking on more than few occasions, just as by all contemporaneous reports, Lincoln himself was. One might be tempted to lampoon the intense focus Daniel Day Lewis brings to his roles, one cannot argue with the results on the screen. While Team of Rivals gives the reader the illusion of having known and worked with Lincoln, this film does give of having been in his presence.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. I’ve been kind of on a Scorsese jag lately. Thanks, Joker (2019), I guess.

Did I like it?: Yes, but to qualify that statement I will say I watched during spare moments on my phone. Thus, I’m almost entirely sure that I did not watch the film in the way Scorsese intended to take it in, nor can I weigh in as to whether or not the movie is too long.

I’m a bit awestruck that this film ever got released. It is the meeting point of three of the most wildly controlling forces in American cinema, director Scorsese, star Day-Lewis, and producer Harvey Weinstein*. That it was only delayed for a year is something of a small miracle. That most—not all, mind you—of those delays owed to 9/11 is utterly flabbergasting, especially when one considers that there’s only a single shot that could be thematically related to the incident.

Does the end product end up compromised? No, not for the most part. Day-Lewis chews through every scene he has, and as I imagine with every film in which he has appeared, he is allowed to do whatever the hell he wants. The tone of the movie around him, however warbles between the kind of deliberate crime drama Scorsese has made his life’s work, and the kind of four-quadrant easily digestible pablum dressed up in the disguise of prestige drama that was Weinstein’s second favorite hobby. It’s designed so meticulously constructed toward the goal of evoking the history it fictionalizes that one can’t help but admire and often awe at the craft on display. And yet, the music feels so all over the place in a desperate attempt to nab one more nomination for best song for Miramax’s campaign money.

Legend has it that a work print/director’s cut exists and that it allegedly feels more focused. Scorsese insists that the final cut is his director’s cut. This may be one of the only times in his output that I wish for the former, but begrudgingly accept the latter.

*Naturally, Weinstein has plenty of problems other than being a control freak, but I can’t be the first one to tell you that, right?