History and Art Make Movie Magic

Since his TV-movie Duel 40 years ago, we’ve known director Steven Spielberg as a master manipulator, but he left his bag of tricks at home for his new film, Lincoln.  Mr. Spielberg directs this film with restraint, his presence subtle; he lets the words and the pictures and the actors tell this sadly joyous story.  Tony Kushner’s script is warm, deep, and utterly brilliant.  Messrs. Spielberg and Kushner worked with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, focusing the film on the last four months of Lincoln’s life, when the most important thing in the world to him was to abolish slavery permanently, through a constitutional amendment.  Passing the amendment before the end of the war was vital, since the Confederate states, once reunited with the Union, would never allow it to stand.  But this is not a documentary.  Lincoln does with history what good films and plays must:  It condenses people, time, events, and cuts to the chase.

Daniel Day-Lewis as President Lincoln.

Lincoln is a work of art.  Its scenes are filmed and lit with a painter’s palette of natural and somber hues, as if a gray gauze lay over the land and the people, inside and out.  Cinematography by Janusz Kaminski is beautifully composed and moving.  The enormously talented group of people who put Lincoln together left me awestruck — from the costuming by Joanna Johnston, to the production design by Rick Carter that complements the art direction and set direction and the whole.  John William’s music is discreet and fitting, film editing by Michael Kahn is masterful, casting by Avy Kaufman was piercingly on the mark.

Daniel Day-Lewis was Abraham Lincoln.  He was possessed — in a good way — as if Lincoln had heard this man searching for him, and said, “At last.  Someone who really gets me,” and proceeded to inhabit Mr. Day-Lewis and speak through him for the duration of the film.  I could listen to Daniel Day-Lewis channeling Lincoln via Kushner all day long.

Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln.  (C)2012 DreamWorks Pictures and 20th Century Fox

Sally Field gave us a Mary Todd Lincoln with whom we could empathize even when Mrs. Lincoln grated. Bruce McGill inhabited a stressed and tough Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The elder statesman of our theatre and film worlds, Hal Holbrook, was a tough old bird, Preston Blair, whose behind-the-scenes machinations for a negotiated peace brought the story to crisis.  

David Straithairn as William Seward.  (c) 2012 DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox

David Strathairn was the wise and restrained Secretary of State, William Seward.  Seward handles the political manipulation that Lincoln doesn’t want to touch, the trading of positions for votes, employing three slightly scurvy wretches gorgeously played by the highly skilled and unexpected instruments of James Spader (in the most delightful impersonation I can recall seeing him take on), Tim Blake Nelson, and John Hawkes.  Fighting the fight on the legislature floor, his sad basset hound face heavily lined beneath a heavy wig, Tommy Lee Jones had a fine time playing irascible and intimidating Thaddeus Stevens.  Jared Harris’ Ulysses S. Grant was subdued and powerful.  Lee Pace is a furious opponent of the amendment as Democrat Fernando Wood of New York, and Michael Stuhlbarg gives a finely tuned performance as George Yeaman, a Kentucky representative torn between what he fears will be the long-term results of passing the amendment, and his certainty that its passage is morally right. 

Tommy Lee Jones as  Thaddeus Stevens.  (c) 2012 DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox.

There are no lackluster performances.  There are no lesser scenes.  This film is gripping from beginning to end.  The night I saw it, the audience applauded as the credits rolled.  Still not a documentary, Lincoln nevertheless is an excellent lesson in how politics works, in how compromise makes change possible.  Yet  the film does not let us forget the horrors of war — the hands-on and hand-to-hand kind.  We see President Lincoln torn between a possibility that he might negotiate a peace, potentially saving thousands of lives, or passing a monumental amendment that would save many thousands more — as well as the American soul.

Lincoln used Euclid’s axiom “Things equal to the same thing are equal” to prove, logically, that all people are equal to one another — this in a late night conversation with young men in his employ.  Not politicians.  Not statesmen.  Just people.  This is the man the film is about, and this the moment that evokes the man…..

The only audience to whom I would not recommend this film are young children.  It was not made to excite with guts and gore.  Its scenes of war evoke horror as they ought.  I cannot emphasize enough how brilliant and serious this film is.  Go see it on a big screen. Then see it again.

“It's time for me to go. But I would rather stay,” Lincoln says to his cabinet as he leaves for Ford's Theatre.  We’d rather he’d stayed as well.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, looking for the next showing of Lincoln.

A Wintry Tale Well Told

Told with perfect pacing, driving needs, obstacles aplenty, goals pursued up to more obstacles, with a never-ending build of extraordinary tension, “Winter’s Bone” is a storyteller’s story. The film is riveting through to its totally satisfying and vaguely frightening end.

The acting is simple, straightforward, totally believable. Raw. The reality of the emotions, sights, sounds is exhausting. “Winter’s Bone” is unrelenting, it has no comfort zone, and much as we may try to insulate ourselves from the cold and the rough and the horrors of the world Ree Dolly inhabits, we cannot.

There are many films and stories with unlikable characters, but this one has some pretty despicable folk in it, including some that initially appear pretty rotten, but who then pale in comparison to the characters we meet as the story progresses. Seventy-odd years ago, seemingly similar characters were rather amusing in old black-and-white movies showing bootleg alcohol stills and caricatures of the impoverished people residing in them there hills -- shotgun-toting hillbillies scaring off revenuers. In “Winter’s Bone,” the same people are still in the same place, still insular, no longer caricatures, and now the stills are meth labs, and the enemy is not revenuers – it’s all outsiders and sometimes their own kin. The untamed country builds shadows in the foliage and around the next hill that hide deeper secrets than any city alleyway. And just to confuse the viewer, “Winter’s Bone” has a few, treasured moments of kindness, even sweetness. Its people are terrifying, and sometimes surprising.

This film works on many levels, first and foremost good storytelling. The teenaged protagonist, Ree Dolly, is met with a real problem of survival in the early minutes of the film. No messing around. She spends the next 80 or so minutes hitting brick walls built and supported by mean ungenerous, unkind people, most of whom are related to her. Each push for desperately needed information fails, but Ree keeps on because the stakes are so very high. She moves forward, trying to climb over and skirt obstacles, finding she cannot, then changes her goal to suit new facts. This is great storytelling.

Director Debra Granik does a sterling job with the excellent screenplay she wrote with Anne Rosselini based on a novel I’m afraid to read by Daniel Woodrell. The pace of the film is unrelenting, the story pushes, heroine (and that is a correct characterization here) Ree pushes back, the tension builds to an unbearable point more than once. This viewer’s shoulders and fists were tight, praying for release.

As Ree’s uncle, John Hawkes combines fierceness with gentleness, and his performance is, not surprisingly, pitch perfect. Also showing up with a reliable, quiet characterization is Garret Dillahunt as the Sheriff, a despicable and difficult job in a hostile region. Deep, dark work is done by a string of wonderful actors with great faces that will imprint in your mind’s eye – Dale Dickey, Casey MacLaren, Sheryl Lee, Ronnie Hall, Shelly Waggener. These people are so good you’d think they just live out there in the hills and aren’t actors at all.

Most amazing of all these fine, fine actors is Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly. In the film's opening shots, I looked at her and saw a slave to her family. She is tough as nails and soft as a baby blanket; she is big sister, teacher, mother, and finally father. Ree is insightful and courageous, resilient and smart enough to be frightened of her own relations while doing her best not to show it. Ms. Lawrence’s performance is the spine of the film – and all without dazzling special effects. The girl is amazing.

There’s a chance I won’t watch this film again, in the way I’ll never re-read Jerzy Kosinski’s “The Painted Bird” which gave me waking nightmares. The actions and the rules of these present-day characters in the Ozarks are more terrifying than any zombie movie could ever be.

“Winter’s Bone” tells a fine nerve-wracking story, a terrifying tale of a community with rules known to all, where transgressors will be held to account. Where the toddlers are taught to shoot, skin, and stew a squirrel. Where kindness and decency are more readily punished than crime. These people are tired out by the time they’re ten.

When we are worn to the bone, we are revealed. “Winter’s Bone” casts light on all sides of the human animal, and reveals the dark in all of us.

Now that’s a great movie.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, still listening to the film's fine score.