How Spielberg's 'Lincoln' Serves History

Abraham Lincoln’s fixture in American society has long transcended the flesh and bone he once occupied. The five-dollar bill, the penny, and his 60-foot visage carved into Mount Rushmore have been perhaps his most commonly known visual representations and his succinct definition of American democracy (“Government of the people, by the people, for the people”) equals the Pledge of Allegiance and the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence as mainstays of the national lexicon. Inasmuch as his grandiose stature may be merited, it risks obscuring the fact that his accomplishments came both in spite and because of his flaws and limitations. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln counters this risk by providing a widely accessible and, more importantly, accurate recreation of Lincoln and his environment in 1864-65.

This was clearly a main goal of the film’s actors and production team. Spielberg requested to film the scenes of the House of Representatives’ deliberation over the thirteenth amendment in the Old House Chamber, its historical setting. He was denied permission, but allowed to obtain measurements of this room which were then used to build an exact replica where the scenes were ultimately filmed. During Lincoln’s presidency, the White House was far more accessible than it is today. Journalist David Remnick, writing in his book The Bridge of Frederick Douglass’ impromptu meeting with Lincoln at the White House, explains, “Washington in the mid-nineteenth century was not the capital of an imperial power; it was small and sleepy; its habits of appointment were extraordinarily casual” (570). So some form of an early scene in the film likely occurred in reality. It shows Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward meeting in his quarters with two regular citizens to field public opinion on the amendment.

In a more subtle manner, the film’s sounds help envelop the viewer in Lincoln’s environment. As Katie Kilkenny reports for Slate, sound designer Ben Burtt (who has won Academy Awards for ET and the third Indiana Jones) was the first person ever to go to the White House to record its sounds for a film. Given that sound recording before the 1870s when Edison invented his phonograph is essentially unavailable, Burtt and his team spent two hours in the White House recording the knocking, opening, shutting and unlocking of various mahogany doors that were present during Lincoln’s administrations. They also recorded the ticking of the clock that Lincoln had in his office during the Civil War (its current home is the Lincoln bedroom) and, more intimately, they obtained from the Kentucky Historical Society Lincoln’s personal pocket watch, which he purportedly wore at Ford’s Theater the night he was assassinated. According to Burtt, the museum’s workers were amazed it could still tick as they were probably the first to wind it in over a hundred years. While these sounds may not gain the immediate notice of most viewers, they contribute to the human depiction of Lincoln that the film presents.

As does, of course, Daniel Day Lewis’ portrayal of Lincoln himself. Lincoln historian Harold Holzer describes the voice Lewis employs in the role - surprisingly soft and high-pitched given common grandiose perceptions of 19th century orators generally and Lincoln specifically - as “uncanny, convincing, and historically right...Lincoln didn’t growl-in fact some people said he whined!” Doris Kearns Goodwin provides a detailed account of Lincoln’s physicality in her biography Team of Rivals on which the film is partly based: 

[His] singular way of walking...gave the impression that his long, gaunt frame needed oiling. He plodded forward in an awkward manner, hands hanging at his sides or folded behind his back. His step had no spring...He lifted his whole foot at once rather than lifting from the toes and then thrust the whole foot down on the ground rather than landing on his heel. “His legs,” another observer noted, “seemed to drag from the knees down, like those of a laborer going home after a hard days work.” (Pg. 6)

Those who have seen the film would be hard-pressed not to read this passage and instantly recognize Lewis’ mannerisms in the role. He, like the film’s production team, clearly dedicated himself to recreate Lincoln as honestly as a narrative film could.

This, regardless of what Lincoln reaps at the coming Golden Globe and Academy Award ceremonies, is its ultimate accomplishment. Much notice has been given (For example, by David Brooks: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/brooks-why-we-love-politics.html?_r=0) to its honest depiction of the political maneuvering and deceit that Lincoln utilized to attain passage of the thirteenth amendment. Senators and Congressmen, amidst their bumbled handling of “the Fiscal Cliff”, have evoked the film as a standard for them to follow (many attended a recent screening at the White House with Spielberg and Goodwin present). Certainly it has some theatrical touches - black Union soldiers, for example, certainly did not memorize the Gettysburg address and then recite it back to Lincoln. But by reconstructing Lincoln and his environment in 1864-65 as close to actuality as possible, it shows how his accomplishments, though they have elevated him to legend, were genuinely human accomplishments. Soon anyone with access to a DVD player will be able to understand how this man could be made from flesh and blood yet still be larger than life.