Abe
Lincoln In Illinois
I think that out of all the
Presidents we have come to know we seem to idealize Abraham Lincoln
the most. Even considering movies, both past and current ones, it
seems like Abraham's character remains untouched and idealized.
Current movies tend to focus on the flaws of sitting presidents in
the want of making these men relate-able to the audience. “Nixon”
(1995) was like that “Thirteen Days” (2000) was like that. You
even have George Washington in the 2000 History Channel movie “The
Crossing” seen in somewhat of a lesser light. Whether good or bad,
when it comes to Abraham Lincoln it seems that we see him as the
reluctant hero with the quick witted tongue. I have to admit that I
enjoy my idealized version of Lincoln from time to time, as my review
of “Young Mr. Lincoln” (1939) shows. However, we must remember
that the man who we tend to list in our top presidents of all time is
also the same president who did arrest and imprison people without
warrant, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, ignoring judicial
orders, was weak in the wording of his Emancipation Proclamation, and
who arguably led the nation to the Civil War. These are issues we
never see addressed in our movies of Lincoln and it seems unlikely we
ever will.
This movie is no exception.
We see Abe's journey from his later youth reading poetry while living
with his folks to the day after his election as president. We see
his meeting of his two greatest loves, Ann Rutledge and Mary Todd.
We see him taking all sorts of different jobs that grew him into the
man he would become. We watch an amazing scene of Lincoln and
Stephen Douglas debating for a spot in the legislature. There are
many different aspects that this movie focuses on and the flow from
one to another is very well paced. The movie seems to hit all the
big points of Lincoln's life before becoming president and even
focusing on a few events and characters that are lesser known. Where
“Young Mr. Lincoln” focused on one specific time period of
Lincoln's life, this movie does a good job of bringing in a good
collection of many times in Lincoln's life and career.
Grade
– B-
This is a decent movie to be
sure. I was not sorry that I saw it. There are, however, several
flaws that I think kept me from giving the movie a better score.
Raymon Massey as Lincoln does a good job and looks pretty fair to the
character. However, whether it was Massey's portrayal, the director,
or the writers; Lincoln seems to be very, very reluctant. Almost
every big event of Lincoln's life seems to be forced upon him.
Meanwhile, Lincoln is shown to take the responsibility but be very
unwilling to do so. This is shown the most when Lincoln's lawyer
partner gets drunk on New Years and pleads and blast Lincoln for not
taking his rightful place in history that has been destined for him.
Mary Todd's character also makes it a forgone conclusion that she
will marry the man who will be president and then forces Lincoln and
pushes him in that direction. All the while, Lincoln is ho-humming
along and becomes very sullen and forlorn in the second half of the
movie. Again, Massey does a good job with Lincoln and probably
portrays the voice with a higher pitch that Lincoln is known to have,
but movies tend not to play on. Ruth Gordon's portrayal of Mary Todd
is played in such a way that is pretty annoying. I'm not sure if
that's what the director was going for, but we see the onset of
Mary's historically known craziness. She is not a likable character
in this movie in the least. Gene Lockhart does a great job with
Stephen Douglas for as little as he's in the movie. However, his
character seems to fear Lincoln pretty much in here and seems to
idealize him early in the movie. He comes right out and says it to
Lincoln later in the movie too.
I don't want to bad mouth
the movie too much because this is probably the better Lincoln
bio-pics that focus not on the Civil War era. It is an entertaining
movie and there is a great speech/debate scene that is very moving.
It just seems that as you get towards the end of the movie, Lincoln
would rather get shot in the head than be president. What?...too
soon?
