The Longest Two and a Half Hours of My Life.

Okay. Maybe not the longest. But it was pretty close. I saw Amber's post on Lincoln and thought I would respond with what I thought of the movie. Over the semester there's been a lot of things that Amber has posted and talked about in class that I completely agree with, and we seem to share a lot of the same tastes in some things. I think it's safe to say this movie was not one of them.

When I went to this movie I went in with high expectations. I went with a pretty large group of people on Thanksgiving night, and my group came out split in half. Half were on Amber's side, and the other half found it mildly painful.

I have to admit, the story was solid and the actors did a good job. Daniel Day-Lewis was a fantastic Lewis. While I'm getting somewhat tired of seeing Sally Field as the same crying mother over and over again, I'll even give an a-okay to her performance. My problem with the movie stemmed from other aspects of the film.

In class, we spent a lot of time talking about how camera movement should help tell the story. You want reasons for everything that's in frame and every movement you make. However, during the long stretches of dialogue the camera would slowly pan and move up and down the table. I found this movement more distracting than anything else. Not only that, but it made the five+ minute stretches of dialogue feel even longer. I felt that if you are confident in your dialogue you shouldn't need to lean on painfully slow pans to add some interest to the piece.

Another aspect that I found distracting throughout the whole thing, which kept me from paying attention to the story, was the continuity...or lack thereof. Throughout the entire film, the piece is battling with constant smoke filling every room. Between cigars, furnaces, lamp, etc...the stuff is everywhere. However, there were a few different part in the film where the smoke would completely disappear in an instant. In one shot a character is faced head on and he takes a puff of the cigar, and a giant plume comes out. The next shot, where less than a second has past, looks at his back towards Lincoln across the room...no smoke to be found. In another scene a we find Lincoln's son outside by a flag that's blowing in the breeze. The next shot, also where less than a second has past, we see the same flag this time looking out of a window, and it's completely still. While these things don't seem that significant in the long-run, when you have a movie that is very dialogue heavy with very long scenes, little things like that can be very distracting. My brother's girlfriend who's never taken a film class in her life also mentioned these things, so I know I can't be the only one.

I would still recommend seeing this movie. I didn't absolutely despise it, and David Strathairn's role as Seward is enough to keep the movie afloat. I do think it did a good job at giving a bit of insight to a president that many people think is one of the best presidents to have ever led America, without really knowing much about him. I just think there were some...or many things that could have been better.