I just watched the movie, Lincoln, for probably the fourth or fifth time, and I once again cried as the 13th Amendment passed, and cried again as the President was assassinated. Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones and a host of others provide a picture of life in those days that is equal to, if not better than, many of the histories I have read of that time period. If you have not seen this movie, you are doing yourself a disservice. It quite accurately portrays the history, the volatile politics, and I think most important, in many parts of the film, the actual words of key players in the abolition of slavery in America. You may have to watch it three or four times; the verbal syntax can be difficult to quickly absorb, owing to the difference in the way educated Americans spoke in the 1860s versus the way we speak much more simply today. You may even find yourself looking into a dictionary to understand such words as piety, cohere or aspiration, but that should be a good thing, to expand our collective vocabulary of English, and not let it constantly dwindle as the years pass. Steven Spielberg has once again delivered a masterpiece to add to the collective American cinema treasure trove of great films.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 23:27:16 +0000
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