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Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Tag Archives: civil war

Review: “Lincoln”

30 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bruce catton, civil war, confederacy, daniel day-lewis, doris kearns goodwin, drama, james spader, joseph gordon levitt, lincoln, politics, sally field, thirteenth amendment, tommy lee jones, tony kushner

Lincoln

“This American Life”

Grade: B+ (RENT IT)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN ISN’T just a man but a monument.  Meanwhile, the movie inspired by his commitment to ending slavery and the Civil War is a mixed bag, a union, as it were, of playwright Tony Kushner’s talky script and Steven Spielberg’s love of spectacle.  What happens when you pair the intensely verbal with the intensely visual?  Sadly less than the sum of its parts, “Lincoln” is a mathematical equation as tricky to decode as “four score and seven years ago.”

Sally-Field-LincolnOn the plus side, there are the performances.  Daniel Day-Lewis is a titan of serious cinema, from “My Left Foot” to the best American film tragedy of the 2000s, “There Will Be Blood.”  This is a Method actor so focused and unfunny that he makes Anthony Hopkins look like Robin Williams.  He nails Lincoln’s reportedly reedy voice and effortless erudition. Reviewing “A Room with a View” back in 1985, Pauline Kael wrote of the actor: “In some scenes I wished the camera were at a more discreet distance from Day-Lewis, because you can see him acting and you’re too conscious of his black hair and mustache – you suspect he’s made up to be ascetic and all profile.” All these years later, Day-Lewis’ profile finally gets the close-up of its career.

On the surface, the casting of Sally Field as Mary Todd seems questionable given that the actress is eleven years D-Day’s senior, but dress any actor in Lincoln’s chin curtain beard and top-hat – and any actress in a hoop skirt and greasy hair curls – and their ages somehow find equilibrium.  The Lincolns’ youngest son Tad (Gulliver McGrath) is seen before the fireplace, studying pictures of slaves disfigured by their masters’ whips. Mary is agonized over the enlistment of her older son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) into the Union Army while, beyond the domestic, Republican abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) and Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) are busy strategizing how to squash the Southern delegation.  “Lincoln,” at its heart, is not a biographical portrait but a study in political procedure. Seward has hired a group of Falstaffian fellows to cajole members of the House of Representations into passing anti-slavery legislation. The stand-out is W.N. Bilbo (a greasy James Spader) who brings some much-needed levity to “Lincoln” as he struts right through the front doors of the White House and delivers some deliciously salty language.

On the other hand, there are elements that subtract from “Lincoln,” or, at least, oppositional elements at work that make the film wobble like a house divided. Thanks to Kushner, “Lincoln,” inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” limits its scope to the political wrangling involved in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and put one more nail in the Confederate coffin.  As the famed1ea284fabeb8cb8df6779196e5615d49b08dcbaafd7f816ff5ce83b6 Civil War historian Bruce Catton wrote, “To save the Union the North had to destroy the Confederacy, and to destroy the Confederacy it had to destroy slavery.”  Given the misnomer of its title, one expects from “Lincoln” a sweeping biopic that begins with the sixteenth President as a young prodigy growing up in a cramped log-cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky and ending with a very bad night at the theatre. The maximalist Steven Spielberg is no doubt up to the task.  So, too, is Kushner, the Pulitzer prize-winner who co-wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s 2005 “Munich” and, oh, just a little play called “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”  Whether Kushner and Spielberg are a match made in heaven should remain in question.  There’s a palpable tension between Spielberg’s love of the panoramic (i.e. the coast of Normandy, the Atlantic Ocean, space) and Kushner’s theatrical impulse to withdraw to the musty interiors of the White House and other Washingtonian halls of power. Regardless, “Lincoln” is destined to dominate next year’s Academy Awards; they might as well host the ceremony at the foot of Mount Rushmore.

Have no fear: there will be Oscars.

Review: “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”

23 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

abraham lincoln, action, anthony mackie, bejamin walker, caleb deschanel, civil war, dominic cooper, erin wasson, horror, joshua fry speed, liam neeson, mary elizabeth winstead, rufus sewell, seth grahame-smith, timur bekmambetov, true blood, vampire hunter, vampires

 

“The Exsanguination Proclamation”

Grade: D (SKIP IT)

WHAT A PITY that “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” fails to live up to the fun of its name.  This deadly dull take on the American icon and vampirism’s imagined complicity in nineteenth-century slavery comes from the horror novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the screenplay here, and Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted,” “Day Watch”).  But long before the runaway train carrying Abe (Benjamin Walker) and arch-enemy Adam (Rufus Sewell) crosses a burning bridge at the film’s climax, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” derails into a whole stockpile of horror film clichés.  If you opt for the 3-D version, prepare yourself for at least a dozen shots, compliments of cinematography Caleb Deschanel (Zooey’s papa), of a piranha-mouthed vampire swallowing his close-ups whole.  This is just as tiresome as the Civil War battlefield scenes which dispense with the realities of actual warfare and mobilize instead an onslaught of CGI simulacra.

The film’s narrative is conventionally chronologic: we see the bushy-bearded president in middle-age in the Oval Office, penning his memoirs, before we flashback to 1818 and the waterside set of “Anaconda.”  A young Abe passionately defends his black friend Will (a wasted Anthony Mackie) from Jack Barts, the first piranha-mouthed bloodsucker played by Marton Csokas.  When Barts drains his mother in her sleep, the aspiring lawyer vows revenge on the undead roaming in Indiana.  (Lincoln’s real mother, Nancy, died of tremetol vomiting in 1818 when Lincoln was just nine years old.)  Vampirism is such a fetish in contemporary culture – think of Bella and Edward’s virginal antics or the queerish hedonism of HBO’s “True Blood” – that it always involves some sacred sort of initiation ceremony, and here, Henry Sturgess (played by up-stager Dominic Cooper) opens Lincoln’s eyes to all things vampiric, from the silver-edged axes he’ll need to slay them to the powerful cult led by Adam and sidekick Vadoma (Erin Wasson).  But whose side is he on?

Refreshingly, there’s a bit of bromance at play between Abe and Henry, perhaps a playful take on Lincoln’s romantic friendship with Joshua Fry Speed, the leader’s lifelong friend and “partner,” in the literal sense, at the general store they ran together in Springfield, Illinois.  One has to wonder why it is Henry’s voice that comes to Lincoln’s mind when he kisses his future first lady, Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).  But this is the only whiff of transgression in “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” which, fatally, had the potential for campy humor but takes itself too seriously by following the rules.  What can we do but laugh when we see the sixteenth president of the U.S.A., Benjamin Walker, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Liam Neeson, wielding an axe and splitting heads like they’re watermelons?  If only Grahame-Smith and Bekmambetov had milked that absurdity for crimson laughs and not the black blood that repetitively splatters the screen.

If only this bloodless time-waster came with its very own John Wilkes Booth to sneak up behind you in the theatre and put you out of your misery.

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