Blood will Flow

Went to see Lincoln this afternoon with my cousin and I can't recommend it highly enough.  Honestly, I was sitting there all the way through thinking this is SUCH a good film!  The dialogue must have been a script-writer's dream.  Apart from the great speeches that must be a matter of record, the exchanges in the more private scenes were all superb.  Such a rich and varied vocabulary, it was a joy to listen to.

Someone had told me that the film was slow, and I suppose you could say that - in that there wasn't a huge amount of action scenes in it, but it was packed full of tension, and the scenes in congress were really entertaining.  There was one scene in particular that I really felt merited a round of applause. 

As for Daniel Day Lewis' Lincoln?  Well.  I was totally convinced that he was the man himself.  He had such a presence, commanded every scene he was in, even when he was just a silhouette, or a profile, or a quiet figure sitting in his chair.  That light tenor voice shouldn't have had so much impact, but somehow it was compelling.  DDL made me love this man - with his humour, and his joy in telling stories, his pain, and his driving passion.  I loved how tactile he was, the way he grasped random people's hands, gripped shoulders, made physical connections.

The whole cast as an ensemble were totally brilliant - I shall certainly buy the DVD because I could watch this over and over.

One minor niggle (and this is my old anti-American prejudice talking here) - the whole premise of the film is the heroic and totally worthy abolition of slavery, which is fine and dandy, but because the focus is so tightly on the USA throughout the film, you could easily go away with the impression that America was the first/only country in the world to think about abolition.  Just a heads up, we'd got rid of it over here in 1772, and across the British Empire by 1833...and even that was late compared to some other countries.  Just sayin'... *wink*

Anyhow, if you haven't been to see it yet, go