Lincoln (film)

While consulting on a Steven Spielberg project in 1999, Goodwin told Spielberg she was planning to write Team of Rivals, and Spielberg immediately told her he wanted the film rights.[28] DreamWorks finalized the deal in 2001,[29] and by the end of the year, John Logan signed on to write the script.[30] His draft focused on Lincoln's friendship with Frederick Douglass.[31] Playwright Paul Webb was hired to rewrite, and filming was set to begin in January 2006,[29] but Spielberg delayed it out of dissatisfaction with the script.[32] Liam Neeson said Webb's draft covered the entirety of Lincoln's term as President.[33]

Tony Kushner replaced Webb. Kushner considered Lincoln "the greatest democratic leader in the world" and found the writing assignment daunting because "I have no idea [what made him great]; I don't understand what he did any more than I understand how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or Mozart wrote Così fan tutte." Kushner said Lincoln's abolitionist ideals made him appealing to a Jewish writer, and although he felt Lincoln was Christian, he noted the president rarely quoted the New Testament and that his "thinking and his ethical deliberation seem very talmudic".[34] By late 2008, Kushner joked he was on his "967,000th book about Abraham Lincoln".[35] Kushner's initial 500-page draft focused on four months in the life of Lincoln, and by February 2009 he had rewritten it to focus on two months in Lincoln's life when he was preoccupied with adopting the Thirteenth Amendment.[33]

Spielberg approached Daniel Day-Lewis about the project in 2003, but Day-Lewis turned down the part at the time, believing the idea of himself playing Lincoln "preposterous".[36] Liam Neeson was cast as Lincoln in January 2005, having worked previously with Spielberg in Schindler's List.[29] In preparation for the role, Neeson studied Lincoln extensively.[37] However, in July 2010, Neeson left the project, saying that he had grown too old for the part. Neeson was 58 at the time, and Lincoln, during the period depicted, was 55 and 56.[38] In an interview with GQ, Neeson said he realized during a table read that the part was not right for him in "a thunderbolt moment" and after the read requested that Spielberg recast his role.[39] Co-star Sally Field, in a 2012 PBS interview, intimated that Neeson's decision was influenced by the death of his wife Natasha Richardson less than a year earlier.[40][41] In November 2010, it was announced that Day-Lewis would replace Neeson in the role.[42]

While promoting Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in May 2008, Spielberg announced his intention to start filming in early 2009,[43] for release in November, ten months after the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.[28] In January 2009, Taunton and Dighton, Massachusetts were being scouted as potential locations.[44] Spielberg arranged a $50 million budget for the film, to please Paramount Pictures CEO Brad Grey, who had previously delayed the project over concerns it was too similar to Spielberg's commercially unsuccessful Amistad (1997). Spielberg had wanted Touchstone Pictures – which agreed to distribute all his films from 2010 – to distribute the film, but he was unable to afford paying off Paramount, which had collaborated with DreamWorks on the film's development.[45]

Filming took place in Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, Virginia. In reference to Petersburg, according to location manager Colleen Gibbons, "one thing that attracted the filmmakers to the city was the 180-degree vista of historic structures" which is "very rare".[46]

The Virginia State Capitol served as the exteriors and interiors of the U.S Capitol, and the exteriors of the White House. The House of Delegates inside the building was remodeled to fit for The House of Representatives Chamber set. Scenes representing Grover's Theatre were filmed in Fredericksburg, Virginia, at Virginia Repertory Theatre's November Theatre.[47]

John Williams composed and conducted the score. The score was recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Chorus.[48][49] The soundtrack album was released by Sony Classical on November 6, 2012.

All music was composed by Williams, except "Battle Cry of Freedom," which was written in 1862 by American composer George Frederick Root (1820–1895) during the American Civil War.

Track 6 "With Malice Toward None" was composed by John Williams for Chris Martin, principal trumpeter of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the time.[50]

Lincoln earned $182,207,973 in North America from 2,293 theaters and $93,085,477 overseas for a total of $275,293,450, well exceeding its $65 million budget. The film had a limited opening in 11 theaters with $944,308 and an average of $85,846 per theater. It opened at the #15 rank, becoming the highest opening of a film with such a limited release. The film opened in 1,175 theaters with $21,049,406 and an average of $11,859 per theater.[5] Due to the widespread success of Lincoln, Disney produced additional prints of the film to accommodate theater demand.[61]

Lincoln received worldwide critical acclaim. The cast was notably lauded, especially Day-Lewis, Field, and Jones. The film currently holds an 89% approval rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 279 reviews with an average rating of 7.99/10, with the critical consensus "Daniel Day-Lewis characteristically delivers in this witty, dignified portrait that immerses the audience in its world and entertains even as it informs."[62] On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 86 (out of 100) based on 44 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim", thus making it Spielberg's highest-rated film on the site since Saving Private Ryan.[63]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 4 out of 4 stars and said, "The hallmark of the man, performed so powerfully by Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, is calm self-confidence, patience and a willingness to play politics in a realistic way."[64] Glenn Kenny of MSN Movies gave it 5 out of 5 stars stating, "It's the most remarkable movie Steven Spielberg has made in quite a spell, and one of the things that makes it remarkable is how it fulfills those expectations by simultaneously ignoring and transcending them."[65]

Colin Covert of the Star Tribune wrote, "Lincoln is one of those rare projects where a great director, a great actor and a great writer amplify one another's gifts. The team of Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tony Kushner has brought forth a triumphant piece of historical journalism, a profound work of popular art and a rich examination of one of our darkest epochs."[66] It was praised by Charlie McCollum of the San Jose Mercury News as "one of the finest historical dramas ever committed to film."[67] Despite mostly positive reviews, Rex Reed of The New York Observer stated, "In all, there's too much material, too little revelation and almost nothing of Spielberg's reliable cinematic flair." However, the reviews have been unanimous in their praise of Day-Lewis's performance as Abraham Lincoln.

A. O. Scott from The New York Times stated the film "is finally a movie about how difficult and costly it has been for the United States to recognize the full and equal humanity of black people" and concluded that the movie was "a rough and noble democratic masterpiece".[68] Scott also stated that Lincoln's concern about his wife's emotional instability and "the strains of a wartime presidency ... produce a portrait that is intimate but also decorous, drawn with extraordinary sensitivity and insight and focused, above all, on Lincoln's character as a politician. This is, in other words, less a biopic than a political thriller, a civics lesson that is energetically staged and alive with moral energy."[68]

Lebanese film critic Anis Tabet gave the film a positive review, giving it a 3.5/4 rating.[69]

As reported in the Maariv newspaper, on February 3, 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers discussed Spielberg's film, which several of them saw in Israeli cinemas. They debated whether the end of abolishing slavery justified the means used by Lincoln, and also compared Lincoln's predicament with their own complicated situation in the confusing aftermath of the 2013 Israeli elections.[70]

Eric Foner (Columbia University), a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian of the period, claimed in a letter to The New York Times that "The film grossly exaggerates the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact." He also noted, "The 13th Amendment originated not with Lincoln but with a petition campaign early in 1864 organized by the Women's National Loyal League, an organization of abolitionist women headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton."[71] Kate Masur (Northwestern University) accused the film of oversimplifying the role of blacks in abolition and dismissed the effort as "an opportunity squandered" in an op-ed for The New York Times.[72] Harold Holzer, the co-chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and author of more than 40 books, served as a consultant to the film and praised it, but also observed that there is "no shortage of small historical bloopers in the movie" in a piece for The Daily Beast. Holzer states, "As for the Spielberg movie's opening scene ... it is almost inconceivable that any uniformed soldier of the day (or civilians, for that matter) would have memorized a speech that, however ingrained in modern memory, did not achieve any semblance of a national reputation until the 20th century."[73]

Barry Bradford, a member of the Organization of American Historians, offers an analysis of some of the finer historical points of the film's representation of clothing, relationships and appearance.[74] Allen Guelzo (Gettysburg College), also writing for The Daily Beast, had some plot criticism, but disagreed with Holzer, arguing that, "The pains that have been taken in the name of historical authenticity in this movie are worth hailing just on their own terms".[75] In a later interview with the World Socialist Web Site Guelzo claimed that "the film was 90 percent on the mark, which given the way Hollywood usually does history is saying something" and that it "got with reasonable accuracy a lot of Lincoln's character, the characters of the main protagonists, and the overall debate over the 13th Amendment. The acting and screenwriting were especially well done... I had never thought that Daniel Day-Lewis was acting, because what he portrayed seemed so close to my own mental image of what Lincoln must have been like."[76] A historian has suggested that the depiction of Lincoln's high pitched voice, somewhat awkward mannerisms and even how he walked was remarkably accurate.[77]

David Stewart, an independent historical author, writing for History News Network, described Spielberg's work as "reasonably solid history", and told readers of HNN to "go see it with a clear conscience".[78] Lincoln biographer Ronald White also admired the film, though he noted a few mistakes and pointed out in an interview with NPR, "Is every word true? No."[79]

Historian Joshua M. Zeitz, writing in The Atlantic, noted some minor mistakes, but concluded that "Lincoln is not a perfect film, but it is an important film".[80] Following a screening during the film's opening weekend, the Minnesota Civil War Commemoration Task Force held a panel discussion in which Dr. David Woodard of Concordia University remarked, "I always look at these films to see if a regular person who wasn't a 'Lincoln nut' would want to read a book about it after they watched the movie. I get the impression that most people who are not history buffs will now want to read something about Lincoln."[81]

Regarding the historical source material for Kushner's screenplay, legal historian Michael Vorenberg, a professor at Brown University and author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, The Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment,[82] noted several details throughout the film that "could only have come from [his] book."[83] Among these details were specifics of dealings between Democrats and Thaddeus Stevens, the story behind securing Alexander Coffroth's vote and the fact that African Americans were present in the congressional galleries during the final vote.[83] Ultimately, Kushner replied directly to inquiries from The New Republic writer Timothy Noah, explaining that while he had read Vorenberg's book and many others as research, he insists that Team of Rivals was his principal source material for the film.[84]

Lincoln was listed on many critics' top ten lists.[85]