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.