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Inscription: 25 Nov 2005, 00:46 Messages: 86993 Localisation: Fortress of Précarité
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Ca s'arrête plus. Steven Spielberg delivers his finest work since Minority Report (2002) with his politically charged and emotionally timely film, Lincoln. (...) Tony Kushner adapts the screenplay with clever candor and surprisingly humorous dialogue. Lincoln takes on such a life force of its near two-and-a-half hour runtime but never lets up on its thematic elements or attempts to take the easy route of cheap period satire that wears thin in other films about a dark time in America’s history. The film doesn’t just focus on Lincoln, the political messiah sent to save America from evil, its non-dictum method in retelling a story with so many surrounding characters gives Abe a unique and accessible outlook for a viewer to latch onto, no matter what the viewer may or may not know about him. (...) Spielberg hasn’t been this aware of his abilities as a director since Saving Private Ryan (1998). It’s a huge step back in the right direction. (...) John Williams’ score is subtle, not as contrived as thought from the trailer (...) Janusz Kaminski, one of the best cinematographers working, captures elegant and stunning shots throughout but eventually doesn’t take enough risks with the lens to be considered an achievement. (...) It’s not as good as “Ryan” or “Schindler” but it’s one of his best efforts, period. He’s on his game in a big way. The film is splendid, cinematic magic of the highest degree with screenwriter Tony Kushner as the star of the show. It’s his best theatrical writing effort thus far and a threat in Adapted Screenplay. The last thirty minutes are the best thirty minutes I’ve seen on film this year. Lincoln is a near masterpiece. I can’t imagine a more appropriate way to tell Lincoln’s story than what Spielberg has done here. http://www.awardscircuit.com/2012/10/08/lincoln-%C2%BD/
Thankfully, we now have a film, courtesy of the legendary Steven Spielberg, that brings the 16th President's amazing uphill battle to cinematic life. The cold hard facts could not be more impressive. For Lincoln, an adaptation of the biography Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Spielberg scales down his usual blockbuster sensibilities (last seen in 2011's World War I melodrama War Horse) to craft an intimate portrait of an iconic political figure. To pull it off, writer Tony Kushner (Munich and the two-part Angels in America) constructs the film like a play, relying on the soothing, chameleon presence of Daniel Day-Lewis to breath life into Lincoln's poetic waxing. The President hits road block after road block on his quest to free the slaves and end the war, Kushner and Spielberg weaving in handfuls of characters to pull him in various directions (and accurately represent the real life events). Each time Day-Lewis' Lincoln gracefully dances the dance, solving every problem with action and words. Today, Lincoln is held in high regard as an inspirational figure. Spielberg shows us why. (...) The story is simple, but Kushner doesn't shy away from laying down lengthy passages of political discussion in order to show the importance of Lincoln's task. (...) The fact-heavy approach takes getting used to, but Spielberg and Kushner adeptly dig deep beyond the political gabfest to find a human side to Lincoln. He's a gentle man, a warm man, and a hilarious man. (...) The drama is iffier: a side story involving Lincoln's son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) teases an interesting family dynamic that is never fully explored, and is clunky when dropped to the wayside in favor of larger issues. Same goes for Lincoln's wife Mary Todd (Sally Field), who continues to grieve for the couple's lost child. They're important issues, but don't quite work in the fabric of this specific narrative. http://www.hollywood.com/news/Lincoln_D ... w/41929149
the Spielberg effort showcased the filmmaker's uncharacteristic willingness to recede into the material, resulting in a stagy, hyper-literate drama that begs comparisons to his "Amistad" while towering over it thanks to a handful of measured performances and Tony Kushner's heavy screenplay. There are moments in "Lincoln" when typical Spielberg-grade sentimentalism, from the soundtrack to countless histrionic outbursts, encroach on the story's more subdued qualities. But there's a noticeable consistency to the movie's internal battles; this is, after all, a Civil War tale. (...) Don't trust the trailer. The handful of scenes excerpted in the fleeting teasers released in recent weeks highlight the clumsier scenes involving Lincoln's persistence in passing the 13th Amendment during the tense period when he campaigned for members of Congress to ratify the constitution in early 1864, four months before his assassination. (...) At two hours and 30 minutes or so (no one was quite sure of the runtime beforehand), "Lincoln" contains only a single battle scene in its opening seconds. The rest is pure talk, a keen dramatization of Doris Kearns Goodwin's tome "Team of Rivals," that delivers an overview of Lincoln's crowning achievement in chunks of strategy talk. Ostensibly a well-acted history lesson, it captures the turmoil of the period by observing Lincoln at work rather than wasting time valorizing him.
Unlike John Ford's "Young Mr. Lincoln" or D.W. Griffith's "Abraham Lincoln," Spielberg's focused approach compresses the portrait of an icon into a collection of conversations that oscillate between his professional life and the more uncertain challenges he faced in his relationship with his mentally unstable wife Mary Todd (Sally Field, who lands a handful of frenzied monologues) and his children, including the grown son Robert Todd Lincoln (a barely-seen Joseph Gordon Levitt), whose interest in joining the war gives the president a personal reason to end it. While he's still a dynamic, morally upstanding figure, Day Lewis' Lincoln at least displays a fair amount of conflict. (...) There's not much to "Lincoln" aside from the president and his peers engaging in discourse on the many reasons to abolish slavery. The constant chatter alone makes it stand out in the filmmaker's oeuvre. When I spoke to the director last year, he said he felt no need to remain tethered to large scale storytelling. "If I found a story and felt empowered to want to direct it, and it was just a couple of characters in a room, I would do it," he said. (...) Aided by Kushner's script, "Lincoln" is seriously muted compared to anything Spielberg has done before. "The West Wing" by way of a costume drama, it tracks the abolition of slavery as a series of negotiations with major ramifications only transparently stated in the final scenes. "This is history!" someone actually exclaims. Indeed it is, and with all that talking, "Lincoln" eventually runs out of breath, but not before making it clear that the 65-year-old Spielberg most certainly has not. http://www.indiewire.com/article/spielb ... he-trailer
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