A mighty blow for freedom

With Steven Spielberg as director and Daniel Day-Lewis the lead actor, Lincoln smacks of "heavyweight" with a capital "H". But even while taking movie-goers back to the tail-end of the American civil war and US president Abraham Lincoln's Herculean efforts to abolish slavery, Spielberg's film is more than just a grandiose history lesson. It's also an intimate character study, for as the director has stated, "I wanted to make a film that would show how multifaceted Lincoln was. He was a statesman, a military leader, but also a father and a husband and a man who was always, continuously, looking deep inside himself".

Lincoln is set in 1865, just as the Union states from the north are about to defeat the 11 Confederate states from the south after a bloody four-year conflict. As the history books tell us, the 16th US president must abolish slavery before the end of the civil war, fearing that if he didn't, slaves who were already freed might be retaken.

It was Spielberg's suggestion to his Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter, Tony Kushner, that they zero in on January 1865, the month Lincoln set out to push through the landmark 13th Amendment to outlaw slavery. This was, of course, the issue that had sparked the conflict in the first place, after several of the cotton-producing "slave" states rebelled against Lincoln's determination to stop the spread of slavery.

Lincoln may begin with Day-Lewis addressing soldiers with one of those long-winded anecdotes Lincoln loved to tell, but Spielberg's film is not fought out on the battlefields. Rather, it's played out in oak-panelled rooms, from the presidential office to the House of Representatives, as he cajoles, needles and schmoozes opponents (both inside his party and among the Democrats) to come together for the greater good.

Adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin's 944-page historical account Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln would seem a near-impossible feat. After all, watching politicians argue and debate the finer points of the US constitution doesn't exactly sound like cinematic gold dust. But it's here that Lincoln comes alive, thanks not just to Day-Lewis but also to an ensemble cast of the highest order - one that boasts, before this year's awards recognition, 13 Oscar nominations and five wins.