About that Lincoln movie

Other bloggers, Lincoln scholars and movie critics wrote about Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln months ago. 

 

So, why didn’t I?

Good question. Life, I guess—or maybe I just needed time to think about what I wanted to say. 

As with any book or movie which I plan to review, though, I did not read a review—not a single one. Oh, I listened to a couple of question and answer-type sessions—one with Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis, one with Sally Field, and another, a Google+ Hangout with Team of Rivals author Doris Kearns Goodwin, but I kept my vow of letting no one else’s opinion of the movie influence mine. 

By way of introduction, here’s my role in the Lincoln world. 

Not a scholar

 I’m not a trained academic scholar. I’m not a published author. 

I have, though, admired the 16^th President since I was a small child, for as long as I can remember. I was born a block from the site of his Galesburg, Ill. Lincoln-Douglas Debate, held at Knox College’s Old Main. As a child I soaked up all I could learn on field trips to Lincoln sites; as a parent I was excited when my children had the same experiences.

 

As a late-in-life college student, I studied Lincoln and his force on the history and literature of Illinois in as many courses as I could. Upon graduation, I reviewed several Lincoln-related books for the Springfield, Ill. newspaper. 

I was the seventh person in line to see the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum on the day it opened to paying customers. In the Lincoln Bicentennial year, I attended Lincoln scholarly events and visited Lincoln sites in Springfield, Washington, D.C. and Gettysburg. I met most of the leading Lincoln scholars, reviewed books and events, and wrote more than 200 blog posts related to the Bicentennial. 

Though I’m not a Lincoln scholar, I am a Lincoln enthusiast. I’m not an expert on Lincoln and politics, Lincoln and the Civil War, or Lincoln and his presidency. But I can say that I know an awful lot about young Lincoln, Lincoln’s Illinois years, and his wife and family. Few who know me will dispute that.

In looking at the film, I’ll speak to the things on which I’m most qualified to comment and leave the things that are beyond me to the experts who understand those things. 

Not much for movies

I’m not much of a movie watcher either. 

I’m a reader and a student. Give me a good book any day and leave the film viewing to people who like those sorts of things—that is unless it’s a Steven Spielberg film. He can make me put my books down for a couple hours—and, even better, can make me glad I did. 

I remember hearing years ago that Spielberg was planning to make a movie about Lincoln. As did the rest of the Lincoln world and movie lovers, I waited … and waited … and waited. 

It was worth the wait. 

A well-woven work

In Spielberg’s Lincoln we see a story carefully woven, images powerfully presented, directing and acting done as none but Spielberg and crew could have done. 

In selecting Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals as the foundation for his film, Spielberg got off on the right foot. There are many scholars in the Lincoln world, some good, some not-so-much; there are poetic writers and ever-so-boring scribes; there are narrators and there are storytellers. Goodwin is a storyteller. Few equal her gifts in that realm. 

How, though, do you take a book like hers, and condense its more than 900 pages into a film of a couple hours or so? 

Thank goodness, Spielberg got Tony Kushner to do the job. 

I can’t help but think back to Lincoln and his early days in Illinois. Imagine the legendary railsplitter, turning a huge tree into rails to make a fence. Then, imagine that same tree again, but whittled into a likeness of that railsplitter, a spitting image, not too large, not too small, a statue that captured a man so real that the wooden image appeared as the man himself.  

That’s what Kushner did. He took that massive tree of Goodwin’s, whittled and whittled and whittled just so, painstakingly, for years, until he gave us a Lincoln story so real we felt as if we’d stepped back in time and were there watching it unfold in person before our very eyes. 

Again and again as I watched the movie, I had to stop and remind myself, “Ann, this is not the 1860s, you aren’t sitting in that room or walking down those streets. These aren’t the people of Lincoln’s times. They’re actors.” 

Perfect casting

The right actors, in the right roles, directed by only director who could pull it off so well—Steven Spielberg. 

When I heard Daniel Day-Lewis was to play Lincoln I thought, “Last of the Mohicans, yes. Lincoln—really? I just don’t know about that one!” 

Boy, was I ever wrong. From his in-depth study of the man and his mannerisms to the way Day-Lewis brought a voice quieted nearly 150 years ago to life as no one has ever before, Daniel Day-Lewis was Abraham Lincoln. He brought the storyteller, the father, the worry-worn, grieving commander-in-chief to life so well that I often forgot the actor was not the 16^th President himself. 

And, as for Sally Field—I’ve admired the woman since I was a youngster watching that nun fly across the tiny black-and-white screen in my parents’ living room. When I heard she was to play Mary Todd Lincoln, I was sure she’d nail the role, and it’s not an easy role to play. Yet, Field played it with a passion, intensity, and believability that will long sear Mrs. Lincoln in the memory of those who watched her. I am convinced no one could have played that role as well as Field—or interacted as well with Day-Lewis.

If there were one thing Kushner and Spielberg could have done better, it would have been to give us a better portrayal of Robert Todd Lincoln. His character seemed rather shallow and his relationships portrayed only as they were known until recent years. 

After publication of Goodwin’s book and as Kushner worked on the screenplay, author Jason Emerson was wrapping up his seminal work, a biography of Robert Todd Lincoln that shows us Lincoln’s oldest son in a depth previously unexplored.

What a shame Emerson’s work wasn’t done earlier or Spielberg’s project later. I would have loved to see the depth this would have added to the story. 

The good news is that we can still study Robert and Mary and the President—and, if we’re so driven, the Civil War, the politics of the day, the presidency, and more. 

It’s a winner

And when we do, whether this film gathers to it every Oscar for which it is nominated, or not, it is a success, nonetheless. It has achieved all that Spielberg, Goodwin, Kushner, the cast, and all of us who study Lincoln wish for—it has awakened in its viewers a desire to learn more about Lincoln, his life and his legacy. 

Doing so, this film and all who helped to create it truly are the winners.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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Road trippin’ next to Route 66

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I had to giggle as I realized the name of the train I was taking home from a recent visit to the St. Louis area.

I, Lincoln Buff 2, had a ticket to Lincoln on the Lincoln Service. I snickered to myself as I heard the name of the train called out in the station, reported to the conductor that I was “Lincoln Buff 2 to Lincoln on the Lincoln,” and smiled as I posted my status on Facebook.

In fact, I was still smiling more than an hour later as I wrote the musings below.

Looking out the train’s window, I realize that for much of the journey, the tracks run parallel to the iconic highway, Route 66. From time to time, I see undeveloped timberland very much like the timbers in Sangamon County where Lincoln lived for so many years – woods full of bramble bushes, water-slogged low spots and centuries of leaves falling one on another year after year.

For much of the trip I can also see I-55 – that hustling, bustling always-at-least-four-lane-sometimes-more road, built to make an easier, faster thoroughfare between Chicago and St. Louis. It does the second, of course – makes it faster.

Easier, I think, is relative. Is it easier to have to dodge 80-mile-an-hour weavers, who change lanes on a 65-mile-an-hour highway faster than a fickle teenaged girl changes boyfriends?

I like to think easier today is taking that old road, Historic Route 66, or taking the train and having time to muse.

What strikes me most on this journey is the tranquility, the time to sit here and, if I wish, just do nothing. Or, if I’d like, reflect upon my journey, wonder about the people living in the homes and on the farms along the tracks, wonder about the stories of the people sitting near me on the train. Where have they been, where are they going, what baggage do they have besides what they’ve stowed near the door, on the overhead rack or under their seats?

To a writer, everything is a story – things like the town we just passed through with its old abandoned school, businesses and tumble-down homes. I wonder, as I look, which makes for the more interesting story – the “real” one or the one I create as I look out the window?

Thank goodness for lonely two-lane highways and passenger trains. They give us what we rarely give ourselves – time to think, time to imagine and, if we’re lucky, time to unwittingly overhear the phone conversation of a fellow passenger checking up on his mother, encouraging a friend and gently guiding a family member facing a decision. I like that guy sitting behind me without even turning to meet him. It’s the caring in his voice, I guess.

I love the peace and quiet, the time to think, the time to write – but don’t you wonder sometimes what it might be like to visit for a bit one-on-one with a fellow passenger, to hear her stories? I do that, too, sometimes, and they always seem to include twists and turns, trials and triumphs greater than what I could have dreamed up on my own.

Do you suppose the seat we end up in on such a journey is there waiting for us so lives can touch – if only for a few minutes – so we can be comforted or show caring, receive affirmation or provide encouragement?

Imagine the stories those rail cars could share if only they, too, were storytellers.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

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The musings begin

More than a dozen years ago a writer-wannabe moved into a house a couple hundred feet from the train tracks that took Abraham Lincoln to Washington, D.C. a century and a half ago and brought his body back home a few years later.

On the other side of those tracks was Historic Route 66, the Mother Road, often called “the most famous road in the world,” one that stretches from Chicago to California.

She could look out her bedroom window or stand on her deck and see these two roads, which had moved so many people and held many stories.

She could see another road, too.

Just beyond Route 66 was Interstate 55, a hustling, bustling road, stretching from Chicago to St. Louis, a thoroughfare where people drive too fast, get too impatient and seldom treat their fellow sojourners with caring and respect.

The writer-wannabe had loved playing with words for as long as she could remember -- watching them bound off of a page to tell her a story, putting them together to share her own stories or to spread her love. But instead of using her words to make a living, she’d spent more than four decades going down a different trail.

When her path led her to Lincoln’s rails, Route 66 and I-55, she was working in a box (a cubicle) within a much bigger box (a corporate office building) in one of a pair of twin cities through which these three roads passed.

If she’d been adventuresome, this writer-wannabe may have been able to hitch a ride on a rail car to get to her job in the box, or like many others from her community, she could have endured a stressful commute a la interstate.

The road less traveled

But this commuter chose the third, the less-traveled path each day. She took Route 66. Instead of jockeying for position, she could take her time, have her space, reflect on whatever thoughts crawled into the passenger seat of her minivan.

About this time, the writer-wannabe, who had attended a writer’s workshop the year before, began listening to books on tape – essays by authors such as Robert Fulghum, Maya Angelou and Erma Bombeck. She found the more she listened to their essays, the more she found herself writing her own -- in her head, if not on paper.

As Memorial Day approached, she submitted a piece about her reflections on the holiday to the area-wide paper. The op-ed editor liked it. Her words were in print.

Then she started writing freelance book reviews about Illinois-related books for a major downstate newspaper. The reviews gave her the writing samples she needed to apply for a job writing for the corporation where she worked. She moved to a different small box in a different big box, and she wrote for a living.

Yet, she still didn’t feel like a writer. The words she wrote were those the organization needed her to write. Even though the letters were dropping from her fingers onto the keyboard, they weren’t her words. They were what the corporation paid her to share.

She longed to write her own words, and took a stab at it from time to time, writing late into the night on a yellow or white legal pad, sitting at her desktop computer until she nodded off at the keyboard or preparing speeches to share with her fellow Toastmasters.

Directions, please

In the fall of 2008, driving through life seeking direction, the scribe ran smack dab into something that was to change her life forever. As she got her morning word fix, reading the daily paper, a front-page article told of a course to be offered at the community college about “The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln.” It was the college’s way of commemorating the upcoming bicentennial of the 16^th president’s birth.

The writer-wannabe, a lifelong Lincoln enthusiast, took the course, started a blog, began using social media to promote it, and used vacation days to attend Lincoln events nearby and far away, chronicling her journey on her Lincoln Buff 2 blog.

As the bicentennial wound down and she took a much-needed rest from blogging (she’d done 200 in a year, after all), the blogger realized she’d found something else she loved almost as much as Abraham Lincoln – connecting with people, learning from others and sharing what she’d learned, using social media.

In early 2011, as she looked forward to a physical and a career move, she knew that what would bring her the most happiness in the next phase of her career was a marriage of those two things she loved – writing about things that moved her and sharing them using social media.

A writer I-yam

I was that writer-wannabe. I am no more. In April 2011, I became a full-time writer and editor. I work from home and I love what I do.

Now, having rested from blogging for a while, in addition to my professional writing, I’ve poured tens of thousands of words into four manuscripts, one finished and awaiting its next revision, another barely begun, a third off to a healthy start, and a fourth pouring itself onto the page so furiously that I can barely keep up with it.

Along for the ride

I’m ready to blog again, but the musings I want to share this time don’t belong in a blog dedicated to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Though it’s been more than a decade since I lived in the house near Route 66, these words are the legitimate offspring of those “passengers” on my contemplative commutes. The words, the musings - they still occupying the passenger seat of my minivan, but we’ve got room for more riders.

Please, join us on this journey. It’s bound to be an adventure.

Welcome to “Musings on Route 66.”

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

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