Now Showing: Lincoln ****

Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn.
Director: Steve Spielberg.
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Neptune Theatre. Fri-Sat 7.30pm; Sun 5.30pm; Mon-Thurs 7.30pm.
Runtime: 150 minutes
Biography, drama, history.

Hollywood’s most successful director turns on a dime and delivers his most restrained, interior film.

A celebrated playwright shines an illuminating light on no more than a sliver of a great man’s life. A brilliant actor surpasses even himself and makes us see a celebrated figure in ways we hadn’t anticipated. This is the power and the surprise of Lincoln.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Tony Kushner and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president of the United States, Lincoln unfolds during the final four months of the chief executive’s life as he focuses his energies on a dramatic struggle that has not previously loomed large in political mythology: his determination to get the House of Representatives to pass the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery.

This narrow focus has paradoxically enabled us to see Lincoln in a way a more broad-ranging film might have been unable to match. It has also made for a movie whose pleasures are subtle ones, that knows how to reveal the considerable drama inherent in the overarching battle of big ideas over the amendment as well as the small-bore skirmishes of political strategy and the nitty-gritty scramble for congressional votes.

These things all begin, as thoughtful films invariably do, with an excellent script. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for Angels in America, Kushner has always been adept at illuminating the interplay of the personal and the political. His literate screenplay, based on parts of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Lincoln, is smart, dramatic and confident of the value of what it has to say.

There is nothing bravura or overly emotional about Spielberg’s direction here, but the impeccable filmmaking is no less impressive for being quiet and to the point. The director delivers selfless, pulled-back satisfactions: he’s there in service of the script and the acting, to enhance the spoken word rather than burnish his reputation.

The key speaker, obviously, is Day-Lewis. No one needs to be told at this late date what a consummate actor he is, but even those used to the way he disappears into roles will be startled by the marvellously relaxed way he morphs into this character and simply becomes Lincoln.