I was perusing through my usual
morning update from the Guardian.UK on Facebook, and caught the very positive
first reviews of Steven Spielberg's new movie on "Lincoln" starring
Academy-award winner Daniel Day-Lewis at the secret screening at the New York
film festival last night.
The long-awaited biopic of our
16th President will hit the big screens across the country on Friday, November
16, 2012 after making its World Premiere on the closing night film of American
Film Institute's (AFI) FEST 2012. The gala
screening event will take place on Thursday, November 8 at the Historic Chinese
Theater in Hollywood, California and will feature the stars, director
Spielsberg, writer Tony Kushner and most probably historian Doris Kearns
Goodwin, author of the book "Team of Rivals" that was the basis for most
of the screenplay. This makes me long for the days when I lived in next to Tinsel
town and my radio show was my pass to the aforementioned screening events...
It didn't seem that long ago
(2009) when I and my fellow Oregon Lincoln Bicentennial Commissioners were
sitting in the audience waiting for the
start of the Mark O. Hatfield Historians
Forum featuring Ms. Goodwin and her best-selling
book on Lincoln and his cabinet. While waiting for the lights to be dimmed, we
speculated about the news at that time from
Hollywood about Spielberg's selection of Liam Neeson to portray Lincoln; then we
went on to spend a very entertaining
evening with Ms. Goodwin. The diminutive historian regaled us with tales about
her work writing biographies, her days when she assisted President Lyndon B. Johnson during the last year of his
administration and her later assistance of Johnson with his memoirs, her family's love of baseball and her early
school days in parochial school.
I remember spending a few minutes
talking with her at the post-lecture reception held in the atrium of the Oregon
History Museum, and asking her what were Lincoln’s greatest strengths and
weaknesses? She told my group that some of Lincoln’s greatest strengths would
sometimes become his greatest weaknesses. For example: Lincoln's ability to
extend forgiveness. Lincoln was willing to give people a second or even third
chance; it was a strength that allowed Lincoln to transcend the slights he may
have received at the hands of his cabinet members and advisers and to fully
utilize their talents in running the country and restoring the Union.
However, this strength also
turned into a liability, especially where Union Major General McClellan was
concerned. Until McClellan was finally "fired" after the September
1862 Battle of Antietam, "Little Mac” was allowed to continue as
general-in-chief of the Union Army even though he missed many opportunities to
engage with the enemy and to take full advantage of the winning tide in Union
victories, instead using the excuse of being outnumbered by the Confederate
troops, or that his horses were tired.
Conversely, Lincoln could also
hold a life-long grudge...it destroyed his relationship with his own father,
Thomas. Lincoln never forgave Thomas Lincoln for mistreating him when he was
growing up and for erroneously considering his son's quest for knowledge as a
sign of laziness. When the elder Lincoln was on his deathbed, Abraham could not
put aside his anger towards his father and subsequently didn’t make the trip
home to pay his respects. Lincoln was human, after all.
According to early reviews of the
movie, which was filmed over ten months at an estimated cost of $50,000,000;
the Lincolnphiles and Civil War history buffs will find much to admire in
"Lincoln." The movie is not a rehash of a "Gods and
Generals" type of Civil War action-pic, with cutaways to
Lincoln-in-his-war-room type of a movie. According to Jonathan Crow of
"Movie Talk", Lincoln "centers on the last few months of the
president's life when he managed to get the 13th amendment passed, which
outlawed slavery, during the waning days of the Civil War... star Daniel
Day-Lewis delivers a masterful, mesmerizing performance...and is now no doubt a
front-runner for the best-actor Oscar…”
Tony Kushner spent six years
working on the film as the writer for "Lincoln", and according to the
critics, the script shows the hallmark of the playwright well-known for his
Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Angels in America,” This is the second time
Kushner has worked with Spielberg after last writing “Munich.” The music for “Lincoln” was composed by Academy
Award winning John Williams, and an “Oscar-vibe” is out already about the performances
of Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy-Lee Jones.
The roster of stars includes Sally
Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones as Republican Thaddeus Stevens,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln and David Strathaim as Secretary of
State William Seward, Bruce McGill as Edwin Stanton and Jared Harris as Ulysses
S. Grant. Also appearing are Gloria
Reuben, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Healey, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tim Blake
Nelson, Lee Pace, James Spader, and Michael Stuhlbarg. Spielberg’s first choice
to play Lincoln, Liam Neeson, dropped out of the project around 2010, and was
recorded on a British morning television show as saying “ I was attached to it
for a while, but it's now -- I'm past my sell-by date." The 6 foot four Neeson just turned 60 on July
7, 2012; and felt that he was probably too old (and conversely, too robust) to portray the “rail-thin” president, who was assassinated
by John Wilkes Booth at the age of 56.
Even though the movie “Lincoln”
wasn’t ready in time for the national celebration of the 200th
Anniversary of President Lincoln’s birthday back in 2009; Spielberg’s film
biography of our beloved 16th President is bound to be the cinematic
centerpiece of the ongoing national and Oregon Civil War 150th
Anniversary commemorative activities.
To read the Guardian on Facebook
review of the movie “Lincoln”, go to this link: https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/film/2012/oct/09/lincoln-review-spielberg-day-lewis?post_gdp=true
To read about Liam Neeson’s
remarks about leaving the production of Lincoln, check out this link: http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/actor-almost-played-abraham-lincoln-180925344.html
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