I enjoyed Lincoln, but I did not love it. It is undeniably a good topic for a film, and they wrote a good amount of fairly decent dialog for the characters. It was interesting, it was educational, and it was satisfying. I would recommend it to anyone.

My problem is that Spielberg’s heavy style, although somewhat muted here, still strongly colors the entire proceeding. You are every second painfully aware that you are watching a Hollywood movie. Climactic moments are too numerous, over-emphasized, and held for too long. The humor is too obvious and too telegraphed. Since the director is Steven Spielberg, he gets to have lots of big stars in his film, but they prove to be distracting. There is something about Tommy Lee Jones that makes me not believe him in any role he plays, and this is doubly true if he is wearing a wig (remember him in JFK?!) I also felt that he, David Strathairn, and Sally Field came across as decidedly too modern (I’m not sure if it was their performances or if they are just too strongly familiar,) and the same was true of some of the supporting casting. I did like James Spader and John Hawkes, however – they were quite convincing in their small but important roles.

Then there is Daniel Day Lewis, an actor that has always amazed me with his ability to completely disappear into any part he plays, despite his tendency to star in films I don’t like. He does it again here, giving us a Lincoln that gracefully blends most of what we know about Lincoln’s complex personality. I do wonder if he shaded his performance a bit too much in the “Noam Chomsky” direction, but I still thought he was really good. I just wish the dialog had been better – I don’t feel like they got across Lincoln as a master manipulator as well as they might have.

As for the John Williams score, nothing sucks life out of a film quite like a John Williams score. This one was less offensive than usual, or perhaps it was just less emphasized, but it still had its usual unfortunate effect.

Lincoln is far from a bad film, in fact there’s a lot to like about it. It’s worth seeing despite its problems and shortcomings.