Lincoln

During the first hour of Lincoln there comes a point where you feel if they pan across one more portrait of Lincoln's craggy face, you're going to turn the damn thing off. Fortunately, the subject matter is larger than the occasional ineptitude of the filmmakers, and four hours later when Alan Menken's (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) stirring soundtrack has taken up semi-permanent residence in your soul, and Lincoln's face scrolls across the screen for about the thousandth time you scrutinize the lines of agonizing reflection carved into the skin as eagerly as would a young Jewish scholar poring over the Torah. Combining 19th-century archival photographs with the sonorous narration of James Earl Jones, and the voices of actors and actresses representing the characters (ranging from Jason Robards' robust Abraham Lincoln to Arnold Schwarzenegger's wooden Presidential aide John G. Nicolay to Frank Langella's absurdly evil whisper representing John Wilkes Booth), Lincoln is arranged in almost serendipitous fashion. Divided into four programs, "The Making of a President 1860-1862," "The Pivotal Year 1863," "I Want to Finish This Job 1864," and "Now He Belongs to the Ages 1865," the five-year main story at the center of Lincoln is regularly interrupted for excursions into Lincoln's childhood and early adult years. We learn of the strange relationship between Lincoln and his father, hear excerpts from the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates, and observe the bizarre courtship of Mary Todd by the gangly, then insecure, man from Kentucky. Ultimately, however, the main thrust of the story is Lincoln's role in the abolition of slavery and re-uniting of the country, and here the material is so grand it nearly speaks for itself. Unlike its model (The Civil War), Lincoln offers only one voice from the present, the wonderfully accented and astute commentary from Harvard University's David Herbert Donald. More voices might have been better, but one senses that the filmmakers desperately wanted to stay as far away from "scholarly" overtones as possible. Still, one can carp about this, that, and the other, but the fact remains that the viewer comes away from the program with a renewed appreciation for this extraordinary man. Highly recommended. [Note: we watched the Index version, which includes a digital clock in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, to be used in conjunction with a 28-page alphabetical and subject index guide.] (See DANZANTE for availability.)