Good ol' Abe

Lincoln was the big loser on Oscars night, failing in all the main categories bar (a record-breaking third) Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.  Despite the poor showing at the Golden Globes, there was some surprise that it did not prove the exception in bucking the trend of this precursor.  Despite it managing to combine both patriotism and universalism, the Academy may have felt it wound out the story too much and after two and a half hours, cramp had such a deleterious grip on my legs that I felt like Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones, a Best supporting Actor nominee here) hobbling along on his cane.
Director Steven Spielberg was not lacking in ambition (maybe he felt this an apology for the dry Amistad, which though noble, about what he has admitted that he harboured disappointment) and certainly has rediscovered his mojo, after a run where he was slipping into the middle-rank of directors.  He is not dealing with an obscure piece of history but one where everyone knows (or at least should know) the outcome, both of the passage of the 13th Amendment and his subsequent assassination in 1865.  Essentially, he has to liven up a procedural drama.  I must confess I was more familiar with his Emancipation Proclamation at Gettysburg than the 13th Amendment as such but as pointed out here, Abraham Lincoln's War Powers were of dubious legality in peacetime.  Other than the president, I only really was (vaguely) familiar with Secretary of State William Seward and that from his purchase of Alaska from Russia for a dollar a square mile, subsequently known variously as Seward's Folly and Seward's Icebox but which proved its value many times over in the century and a half following 1867.
The film showed the fine balance Lincoln had to tread, cajoling members of his own party and finding inducements for lame-duck Democrats on the opposing side, much as Barack Obama did after the mid-term elections in 2010, to get 'Don't Kiss, Don't Tell' abolished in the US Army and ratification of his nuclear arms treaty with Russia.  The inducements in 1865 were of a decidedly more personal nature - not bribes but the provision of public employment after the lame-ducks had left office, with fixers of whom W.N. Bilbo (James Spader) was a part.  The House of Representative debates were just as mean-spirited and fire-spitting as they are today, with plenty of hyperbole about tyranny, though with the party roles reversed.  There was also the small matter about how to conclude the Civil War - if the 13th Amendment was dropped, a negotiated peace could end the war almost immediately, as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens (Jackie Earle Haley) intimated.  This was pertinent on the personal front as his son, Robert Lincoln (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) wanted to enlist in the defining conflict of its age (in American eyes), much as veterans of the Second World War could claim to be part of 'the Greatest Generation'.  Abe's wife, Mary (Sally Field), was still racked by grief from the death of her son William in 1862 and couldn't bear to lose another.
All these pressures piled a near intolerable weight on Lincoln's shoulders - Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris) telling his president that he looked as if he had aged ten years in one.  Still, Day-Lewis conveyed Lincoln's immense charisma, even when telling a joke at the expense of the English (even if its truth was lacking in the spirit of that particular anecdote).  He was undoubtedly right that the 13th Amendment was the cure for the war, without which the peace would only represent a cease-fire and he used every ounce of intelligence, cunning and courage to bring it to fruition.  Lincoln deserved his place on Mount Rushmore as one of the greatest of presidents, despite serving only four years.
The film goes beyond the mechanics of the actual vote, though this is well handled.  Is it a spoiler to say the legislation passes the two-third majority needed to change the constitution by just two votes (the same margin as incidentally won the 2012 Olympics for London over Paris).  There are meta-issues at hand.  Given Hollywood's anti-smoking attitudes, those of more malleable morals (Seward, Grant, the fixers) are the ones seen puffing away.  When Robert tries to roll some tobacco, in a state of distress at seeing what happens to amputated limbs, his conscience pricked (ever more so), so agitated is he that he cannot perform the task and  he throws it on the floor - that was telling.  Also, the 13th Amendment and winning the war should not be seen as the culmination of Lincoln's work, to which after he could go (not so) softly into the night.  As a man, he wished to travel with Mary, especially to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of David and Solomon (a sop to Spielberg's roots, with no mention of Jesus Christ as inspiration, though Lincoln's faith had been shaken by the Civil War).  As a president he planned a limited role for black voting, rather than merely making them equal before the law - limited as he knew what compromises could be won and what could not (it took exactly another century before black people were allowed to vote).  So he could have achieved so much more had he not been shot (Spielberg plays a bluff on the audience at the end theatre scene) - a personal and national tragedy.  Although dealt with briefly at the end, this is as much one of the key strengths of the movie as any other. 9 out of 10.