Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln"

                    For those looking to experience a movie that has all the visual quality of the best Civil War films and the charming character-driven plot of the best historical drama, check it out.  Daniel Day-Lewis's story-telling as the chatty Lincoln has a Brando-like quality:  you cant take your eyes off him (and neither can Lincoln's male helpers with whom he has several intimate moments.)
                  Of course the best kept secret of the film (and of the American history of Reconstruction) is Thaddeus Stevens--the powerful Pennsylvania Radical Republican--who has the precise amount of acid and scorn for the House's yokels, cynics, and hucksters.  If few contemporary educated and conscientious voters have an outlet to spout rage at the moronic inferno blazing in Michele Bachmann's district or at a Rand Paul stump speech, Stevens seems to act as a delightful proxy for us--albeit in the 19th century.  He lays waste to 'em!  Tommy Lee Jones, as ever, is masterfully patient in a stern and focused portrayal that could have been ruined by bluster.
                  My only issue is a historical one:  Where was Anderew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice President who, after inheriting the presidency, became our worst President?  Wasn't he, impeached and disgraced, worth seeing since he is the darkest decision in Lincoln's legacy?  And while I thought the dreamy sequences that illustrate Lincon's nightmares were haunting and unexpected, seeing Lincoln's face in a flame with a flashback to his second inaugural (after his assassination scene) was a bit much.  But Spielberg never can give up on the happy endings, can he?
                  The critic for The New Republic made a crucial argument for those who enjoyed this movie:
"That is the real lesson for now, in these few days. Being a nobleman or a saint is not enough in a leader. We need someone who can stoop to getting the job done, and wheedling the necessary votes in any way it takes. Lincoln the movie may look archaic and nostalgic in time—even in quite a short time. But for a few days or weeks now, it is the moment in a way few modern movies have managed. It’s very good, but that’s not the point. It’s necessary. Make sure your children take you to see it."
                  Of course, the 13th amendment passed and the movie does a strong job of illustrating the art of the bribe and the suspense of high-pressure negotiations.  But it also neglects the century blacks had to wait in order to gain political equality.  And it neglects to confront (rather than merely reflect) the dysfunctional and outmoded institutions that can allow such grievous injustices to be perpetuated.  While I would recommend this film to anyone, what our culture needs after Lincoln, a soothing movie about political healing, is a film about Reconstruction:  The moment when the best hopes of federal action were dashed by conservative "small government" types; when bought senators and paid representatives knowingly subsidized private industry; when black rights were buried under the flummery of "states rights"; when Lincoln's notion of a government by, for, and of the people disappeared for a generation into a Gilded Age.  

John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy

New York Historical Society, “John Brown:  The Abolitionist and His Legacy”

The echoes have nearly faded from “Black History Month.”  Cliches from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech were (as always) endlessly invoked as scripture, so it is both timely and appropriate that a small exhibit about abolitionist John Brown’s life and his 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry renews debate about the controversial and violent actions in the struggle for equality.  To give the show the recognition it deserves—before John Brown goes marching on after Thursday, March, 25--here’s one last gut-busting shout-out:  “Go see the New York Historical Society’s John Brown:  The Abolitionist and His Legacy! “

The slave-freeing Brown was born a Connecticut Yankee and raised as a provincial pioneer.  Reared with the understanding of equality of all before God, his concern for blacks was matched by his empathy for Native Americans.  The exhibit’s letters, artifacts, and daguerreotypes reveal a man with a Puritan’s zeal.  Through the documents on display, readers will see not an academic (Brown’s spelling is awful) but his inner fire burns through letters which even his friends like Thoreau and Emerson were impressed by.  But as selfless as he seems today, he was a self-lacerating Protestant, convinced that his life was “mostly filled with vanity.” 

In late-antebellum America, “doughfaces” like Presidents Buchanan and Pierce appeased the South while Lincoln’s Secretary Seward hoped to contain it.  Even the future warrior-in-chief nervously maintained in his debates with Stephen Douglas that, “There is no danger of our going [down South] and making war upon them.”  It was Brown’s act which brought the nation to the shots at Sumpter.  And though supported by abolitionist intellectuals of his day and “Secret Six” financiers, it was Brown’s singular raid which demonstrated that violence—and only violence—could crack the back of the Southern slavocracy. 

While undersized the text-heavy but fascinating case display tells the story of Brown’s doomed but nation-rocking raid on Harper’s Ferry Virginia in 1859.  Triumphant and remorseless even when meeting the final drop of the gallows, Brown went to his death criticized even by anti-slavery enthusiasts like William Lloyd Garrison.  The Liberator’s editor called Brown’s raid “a misguided, wild, and apparently insane, though disinterested and well intended effort.” 

While Thomas Hovenden’s 1884 “The Last Moments of John Brown” is a superior painting to the  exhibit’s own colorful central portrait, the image is still a moving depiction of the death scene.  Glowing behind dark glass, it shows a frowzy and grandfatherly Brown fondly looking on a black mother and child on his journey to the rope.  Yet, looking at this or other sentimental images of Brown one should not beatify a saint, but instead understand a man.  He was a man who’s seemingly futile and principled actions clanged the death knell of America’s first (but certainly not last) age of anxiety.  One who’s conviction to justice demands that his heirs forever weigh the costs of war beside the price of peace.  By 1859, that price was too high and Brown, ablaze, seemed to shout through his actions what William Lloyd Garrison bellowed in sweaty debate, “Of course I’m on fire; I have mountains of ice to melt!”