“The South is always different” – Mr. Dibble, first day of Sociology 101 in college
I’ve been in 47 different states, 42 by the time I left high school. For some reason, my father never wanted to visit the Deep South: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina.
So my major impression of the area was formed in 1963, when civil rights marchers in Mississippi were shown being blasted by fire hoses, courtesy of Sheriff Bull Conner. I have little actual contact with the South or people from there, so I carry a full baggage set of prejudices and stereotypes. A place that loves guns, that sends more young men into the armed services than elsewhere. Slavery, Ft. Sumter, Southern Belles, Ku Klux Klan, tenant farmers, “separate but equal” education, Jim Crow laws, “States’ Rights”, right to work laws… Two of the most dangerous places to cycle in America are Memphis and Florida.
I know the place must be much more nuanced, more civilized, than the caricature I carry around in my head. And the people I do know, who come from there, are uniformly polite, rational, and open-minded. And yet, cliches & stereotypes exist for a reason. And in our country’s case, that comes from a conflict which seems embedded in our DNA, for nearly all of the 400 years since the English first came to Virginia as permanent settlers.
The Cavalier vs Yankee dichotomy has always been with us, our version of Arabs and Jews fighting over Palestine for the past 3000 years. Or Serbs and Croats in the Balkans, Catholic and Protestant on Ireland, The list is almost endless. Wherever humans crowd together, tribes at odds with each other seem to emerge and struggle for control over the same precious turf, tribes which adopt beliefs and ways of living at variance with each other.
Our own struggle produced a jury-rigged Constitution which defined some people as property, worth 3/5th of others. A war which cost the lives of 600,000 young men, ruined an entire region for more than a generation, and did little to resolve a conflict which still seems with us, played out at the highest arenas, under different guises, but remains unresolved.
So it is quite reasonable that our greatest artists should choose this conflict as a central theme, trying to illuminate subtleties, and weave stories which provide hopeful resolution, or at least an explanation for out troubles.
Steven Spielberg is one of the most powerful film-makers of our day. Merely mentioning a few of his films should convince anyone of his ability to tell visual, almost dream like stories which grip, awe, and entertain: Jaws, Indiana Jones trilogy, E.T., Empire of the Sun, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report. The man knows how to tell a story with images as much as words, and at his best keeps us spellbound in almost dream-like fascination. A theme he has returned to multiple times involves a suppressed people rising up against oppression, or at least surviving despite utter desolation: The Color Purple, Amistad, Schindler’s List, Munich.
Lincoln fits in with these latter films, but somewhat tangentially. Spielberg corrals a group of talented mainstream artists, and uses his magic once again to help us understand the horrid nature of the conflict between the North and South over slavery near the end of the Civil War. Tony Kushner, Daniel-Day Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones all are used to best effect as President Lincoln maneuvers the thirteenth amendent, outlawing slavery, through Congress and on to passage. This is not an easy narrative, and the ideas, tactics and relationships are not simple. Holding our attention for over two hours on what is basically a story about legislative sausage-making demonstrates just how powerful a cinematic force Mr. Spielberg is.
On one level, this is a character study of Abraham Lincoln at the end of and peak of his powers as a leader, with reflections on the family dynamics with his wife and sons. Those dynamics weave into the next level, which is a remarkable display of the bile and treachery which has characterized American politics at the highest level whenever the North and South clash. But the ultimate, and deepest level within the film concerns how we as a nation choose to treat our fellow citizens, starting with who is even a citizen at all. Both the place of women (Ms. Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, and minor but key turns by two others) and of course African-Americans in our society are central to this dramatic tension. Women, of course, can’t vote, but nonetheless find ways to involve themselves in and direct the action. Elizabeth Marvel playing a minor character, the wife of “Mr. Jolly”, who has come to petition Lincoln, does the actual talking for the pair. And Hal Holbrook, playing a behind the scenes kingpin, Preston Blair, actually defers to his daughter to direct the key tactics involved.
But of course, the entire film would not exist, and would have little value, were it not for the commitment and drive Lincoln showed in January, 1865, to once and for all end slavery in our country, and start us on the road towards making all people full citizens, a path we still find ourselves on today, not yet fully realised. The 13th amendment was but one step, maybe the most important, but still insufficient in itself. By using it as an object lesson, Speilberg accomplishes the rare feat of not only entertaining us through historically accurate drama, but also making us think about the downstream implications and tangential complications created. Thus, Appomattox and Ford’s Theater are seen, not as the end of a tragic inter-necine conflict, or the tragic end to one great man’s life, but as twists in the tale towards Reconstruction and the further racial conflicts of the 20th century.
Lincoln by itself would have been enough to get me thinking about the endless war between the states which we are still fighting today, but a week later, I went with my family on Christmas Day to see Quentin Tarentino’s Django Unchained. Same grand theme, entirely different presentation. The two together are a must-see double feature.
(To Be Continued)