A tour de force. Canyon lined faces ,the scars ravaged by man’s inhumanity


A tour de force. Canyon lined faces ,the scars ravaged by man’s inhumanity

to man.”Lincoln” a massive scenario by  Stephen Spielberg&Tony Kushner with sublime ”commander in chief” portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis as the towering 16th President of the United States.                                                

                                                       II

 Southern “rebs” against Northern “blue bellies”. Brother against brother, minefields of slavery in dispute. The whole range of  emotion come to life amidst cunning   self serving  playing out in some 120 minutes.

The inundation of role playing out as Daniel Day-Lewis gives his inimiocable energy to flesh out  Abraham Lincoln’s moral life, a battleground for the Civil War and the 14th amendment.

Forces of  compromise playing out among what was once young naive idealistic white males, as they evolving into tough  but loveable as they spell out their passions on black folk in chains of servitude, during  Jefferson Davis and General(a West Pointer) Robert E. Lee’s “tentativeness” playing out below the Mason Dixon line.

“Your character is your fate”, Lincoln  under unrestrained pressure&probing... being vilified relentlessly. Aging ten years before our  eyes as Tony Kushner with the three dimensional Tommy Lee Jones, Hal Holbrook, Sally Field become the apotheosis of the President’s war room and inner sanctum, as he plays out his  day to day struggle against the knights of darkness during the war and win the accompanying 14th amendment vote in the House of Representatives.

                                                          III

 Lincoln’s state of mind and temperament  being tested from all . His dreams becoming nightmares, having only his alter ego to sustain his Magna Carta in his fated American birthright. His need to relate parables and memories to his opinionated fractured listeners, coveting their own selfish agendas, Lincoln fuming at their opportunism and self serving.

“The people be damned”.


Not that he believed in the crony tableau, and its conspicuous consumption. Reality of trrading skins in the chess move maneuvering...even George Washington’s portrait being the buffoon, on the wall of an water cooler, owned by an English diplomat, never getting over the Revolutionary War.


                                                           IV

Meanwhile the sympathetic creative minds and what seemed like thousands of credits and cavalry horses galloped into their own trail and Divine Providence into this monumental “Lincoln” that comes alive, breathing fire and brimstone.....in pursuit of his own Holy Grail.

Tommy Lee Jones fresh from the vote, dusting off his wig, jumps into bed with his colored sweetheart mistress wife , the “fers” outscoring the “agins” in the 14th amendment wooing vote...
                                                 

                                                     V

 To his wife, as they rode off in their chauffeured buggy “ We ought to travel. To the center of it all. Jerusalem” John Wilkes Booth waiting, in the theater, later that night.


Pavilion theater, adjacent to “Bryna Court”, Park Slope, opposite Prospect Park, Novemeber 27,2012