"Lincoln" and Surrendering to Movies

I'd been looking forward to it for weeks, and yesterday afternoon I finally went to see "Lincoln".   It's been difficult to tune out what other people have said about the movie, but I managed.  I read no reviews.  If I saw the movie's title mentioned in a Facebook post, I hid it.  Soon after it came out, I told a fellow teacher I thought I'd go see it soon, and she said, "Well, Daniel Day-Lewis was terrific, but --" and before she could say whatever followed the "but", I (rudely) said, "I'm sure he was" and walked out of the room.

I didn't want to hear what she had to say.

I saw article titles of pieces that purported to examine what was and was not historically accurate in the movie.  I ignored all those articles.  Editorials came out soon after the movie arguing what politicians in 2012, and especially President Obama, might learn from "Lincoln".  I haven't read one of those pieces.

When I go to a movie (or a play), I want to know as little as possible.  It's almost impossible to be ignorant of who appears in the movie -- although I wish I could be -- and it's almost impossible to be ignorant of who directs it -- and I'd love not to know this.

You see, I didn't go to "Lincoln" with the idea that it is a Spielberg movie.  I had no interest in watching it in relation to other movies he's made.  I'm not interested, as I watch a movie for the first time, whether it is in the director's style or a departure or anything else.  In fact, if I read or hear someone say, "As with any Spielberg movie, "This Movie" blah blah blah, I quit reading or listening.

I try to watch a movie with as blank of a slate of a mind as I can.

How blank?

Well, I try to forget what the world I live in is like and give myself over to, surrender to the world of the movie I'm watching. 

I never think to myself,  "That could never happen" because it just did.  In the movie.

I never think to myself, "Could that happen?" or "Did that really happen?", rather, I watch a movie thinking, "Here's what happens."

For example, in the movie "Lincoln", since I didn't even begin to wonder or think if it was historically accurate, I found myself intrigued by how the movie explored a handful of questions.

For example, what happens when a President of the United States declares slaves emancipated?  What happens when he suspends habeas corpus?  What happens when he tries to drive a controversial amendment to the U. S. Constitution through a divided House of Representatives?

Watching "Lincoln", these were questions of the moment for me, questions raised in a movie that had a life of its own and was unfolding before me in its own time frame.  I didn't ask, "What happened" back in 1865, I wanted to know what will happen in this movie.

In other words, I watched the movie as a work of fiction, in the best sense of the word. 

So often, the word "fiction" is used to mean something that didn't happen or that is fantasy.

At its best, though, fiction, unlike non-fiction, addresses the question of "what happens" not "what happened".

I viewed "Lincoln" in much the same way I watch "Macbeth" or "Henry V".  These plays transcend historical fact and explore human character, not by being true to historical fact, but by being true to the character of these figures, true to the pressures human beings face.  Sometimes these pressures can be more accurately explored in a work of art than by historical veracity.

For all I know, "Lincoln" was historically accurate.  But it didn't matter to me while I watched it and doesn't matter to me now.

I knew Steven Spielberg directed the movie, but I watched it as if I'd never seen a Spielberg movie in my life.  Why see this movie through the lens of Spielberg's past work, through his successes and failures?  I do the same thing when I see a Shakespeare play.  I love going to see "King Lear" as if I've never seen it performed before in my life.  I love seeing "Hamlet" as if the only suitable way to produce the play is the way it's happening right here before me.  I love to watch "Romeo and Juliet" as if this is its premier and no other production exists and this production is definitive.

I love to lose myself in what I'm watching, letting the present movie or present production define what's worthwhile, what's good, what's real, what works, what should happen.

I go to movies and I see people with their arms crossed as if to say, "Okay.  Give me your best shot.  Try to entertain me.  Try to please me.  I'm tough.  I'm not easily pleased."

I think to myself, "Poor sots."

I go to a movie saying this, "You will have to work hard to disappoint me.  I love to be pleased.  I will experience this movie as if it is the first movie I've ever seen in my life.   I plan on enjoying you."

As I've written before, it's why I never recommend movies.   People ask me if I thought a movie was good.

I don't know if it was good.

I only know how it affected me and I usually am affected by movies in ways I enjoy.  I laughed.  I teared up.  I was afraid.  I was absorbed.  I forgot about the world I live in day to day and have been living in the world of the movie for the last couple of hours.  I usually enjoy having lived in that world and if I don't think I'll enjoy that world, I don't go to the movie.

And I can't talk about a movie right after I've seen it.

I have to go for a walk, get away from people, let it settle in.

It's why I go to so many movies alone.

I had a great experience watching "Lincoln".

I found the main character, Abraham Lincoln, to be a fascinating combination of shrewd, folksy, pragmatic, compassionate, romantic, angry, ambitious, political, unbending, wily, reflective, intelligent, and funny.  For starters.

Daniel Day-Lewis played this character stunningly, astonishingly.  I was enraptured by his performance.

I enjoyed the suspense of the story.  In my world of movie watching, I didn't know how it would all turn out.

I enjoyed the many characters in supporting roles and enjoyed the zest the actors played them with.  Tommy Lee Jones gave me so much pleasure I ached.

Sally Fields made me ache with pleasure, too.  Her portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln was complex:  she was a loving, selfish, petty, ambitious, independent, pained, firm, wobbly, aggrieved, self-absorbed.  For starters.

I enjoyed the portrayal the movie created of the pressures of war, made even more weighty by the pressures of slavery.  Those pressures brought out the best kinds of love, not only of justice but of people, and the worst kinds of prejudice and pettifoggery.  Was this how it happened?  I don't care.  In the world of "Lincoln", this is what happens.

I'll admit, in closing, that I don't always stay within the world of the movie I'm watching, and it's a way my mind wanders during a movie that I love.

My mind wanders off into other roles I've seen actors in a movie in and I love thinking about them in these very different roles.  Yesterday, watching "Lincoln" I delighted in quick thoughts like this:

There's Gidget, there's the Singing Nun, there's Norma Rae as Mary Todd Lincoln.  YES!

There's Johnny, the gay Paki-basher from "My Beautiful Laundrette"....wow!  there he is playing Abraham Lincoln.

Wow...I loved seeing Jackie Earle Hailey, thirty-three years later, after playing Moocher, the time clock punching, frat boy slugging kid in "Breaking Away" ("You're not the quarterback here, Mike!"), now the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, negotiating a peace settlement.

I could go on, but I'll end with my favorite. Back in 1979 all the way up to 1984, one of my very favorite movies was "The Return of the Secaucus 7".  I must have watched it at least 30 times, especially once I had it on videotape (Beta, for the record). 

I never would have guessed, in 1979, that the actor who played the character in that movie who never left home, who worked at the gas station, who seduced Frances, Ron Desjardins, would turn out to be one of the best actors working today:  David Strathairn.  I chuckled for a second as I watched him play the august Secretary of State William Seward, while remembering him sprawled out on a windshield in "The Return of the Secaucus 7", as the character with many of the movie's funniest lines.  But he worked on several John Sayles movies and became well-known for many roles, most notably Edward R. Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck". 

Somehow, when watching a movie, I manage to stay affixed in the world of the movie I'm watching and, at the same time, have bits and pieces of several other movies delighting me as I remember actors in roles they played in the past. 

No wonder I enjoy the movies so much and so easily pleased. 

I like to surrender.