Review of Lincoln (2012) by Ben G — 19 Aug 2013

Before anything else, this film is boringly tedious or tediously boring. I was ready for something edifying, a bit stupid and wrapped in stars and stripes, but this level of tedium came as a surprise. It feels like the team of screenwriters adapted the book as if it had been a novel and not a history book. The result is that we are exposed a problem from every single angle but at no point is there a real story.

The character surely resemble closely their models but as a result they are completely flat, at no point does fiction makes them bigger than life. I'm sure every single word pronounced in the film was actually documented but that doesn't make for very gripping dialogues. The results is that all the possible storylines were barely scrapped. The bunch of lobbyists would have made a great film, but no they are boiled down to a collection of pointless slapsticks. The torment of the president would have been interesting to follow, but the all-knowing camera robes us from that. After almost two hours of film, it seems that Spielberg is still busy introducing every one.

To make matters a little worse the film is quite ugly. There wasn't a single scene where the esthetic was touching, let alone relevant. All in all, a terrible flop!