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Showing posts with label ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Show all posts
Sunday, July 4, 2021
Friday, November 28, 2014
BOY WONDER
Opening today at Harkins Valley Art:
The Better Angels—Shot in ravishing black-and-white, this vision of Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood in Indiana takes its title, of course, from Lincoln’s famous reference to “The Better Angels of Our Nature” in his first inaugural. Writer-director A. J. Edwards seems to be making the case that said Better Angels were Lincoln’s mother and stepmother. The film even begins with an onscreen quote from Abe: “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
The dreamlike, free-floating narrative depicts both this biological mother, Nancy Lincoln (Brit Marling), who died when he was nine, and his father’s new wife Sarah (Diane Kruger) as paragons who instilled in the frontier boy (Braydon Denney) not only civility but compassion. It’s less generous to Thomas Lincoln (Jason Clarke), Abe’s dour drudge of a dad—his appearances often heralded by the sharp crack of an ax as he splits wood. He’s acknowledged as a decent sort at bottom, but fairly or not it’s implied that Lincoln’s greatness arose in spite rather than because of him.
Edwards worked as an editor on several of Terence Malick’s films, and was credited as “Key Creative Consultant” on Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life. This isn’t surprising, since The Better Angels—which Malick produced—seems almost like a retelling of The Tree of Life. Not only does Edwards work slavishly in Malick’s elliptical style, but the story is essentially the same—a boy’s memories of saintly maternal influence and of an upright but joyless, emotionally distant father.
Also like The Tree of Life, The Better Angels, with its lingering, quivering attention to the natural world that surrounded these people, will seem hypnotic and powerful to some viewers—like me—and tiresome and exasperating to others. But to no viewers will it seem like a business-as-usual historical film.
The Better Angels—Shot in ravishing black-and-white, this vision of Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood in Indiana takes its title, of course, from Lincoln’s famous reference to “The Better Angels of Our Nature” in his first inaugural. Writer-director A. J. Edwards seems to be making the case that said Better Angels were Lincoln’s mother and stepmother. The film even begins with an onscreen quote from Abe: “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
The dreamlike, free-floating narrative depicts both this biological mother, Nancy Lincoln (Brit Marling), who died when he was nine, and his father’s new wife Sarah (Diane Kruger) as paragons who instilled in the frontier boy (Braydon Denney) not only civility but compassion. It’s less generous to Thomas Lincoln (Jason Clarke), Abe’s dour drudge of a dad—his appearances often heralded by the sharp crack of an ax as he splits wood. He’s acknowledged as a decent sort at bottom, but fairly or not it’s implied that Lincoln’s greatness arose in spite rather than because of him.
Edwards worked as an editor on several of Terence Malick’s films, and was credited as “Key Creative Consultant” on Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life. This isn’t surprising, since The Better Angels—which Malick produced—seems almost like a retelling of The Tree of Life. Not only does Edwards work slavishly in Malick’s elliptical style, but the story is essentially the same—a boy’s memories of saintly maternal influence and of an upright but joyless, emotionally distant father.
Also like The Tree of Life, The Better Angels, with its lingering, quivering attention to the natural world that surrounded these people, will seem hypnotic and powerful to some viewers—like me—and tiresome and exasperating to others. But to no viewers will it seem like a business-as-usual historical film.
Friday, February 15, 2013
LAMON/ABE
As an onscreen character, Abe Lincoln has been a pretty busy guy over the last year or so. First there was the silly but mildly amusing Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, and then, of course, Spielberg’s epic Lincoln. Then there have also been Abe’s peculiar, spectral appearances in those Ford commercials “rebooting” the Lincoln brand.
And now comes the indie Saving Lincoln, which plays February 16 through 18 at FilmBar in Phoenix. Directed by Salvador Litvak, who wrote the script with his wife, Nina Davidovitch Litvak, it’s an account of Lincoln’s long and intimate friendship with Ward Hill Lamon, an ebullient Virginian who was first a law crony of Abe’s, but later served as U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, and Lincoln’s unofficial but frequent bodyguard and companion.
Students of low-budget filmmaking are likely to be fascinated by Saving Lincoln’s ingenious solution to the problem of making an historical epic for (reportedly) under a million dollars. The actors were shot in front of a green-screen, with the backgrounds added later, many of them derived from historical photographs. The results aren’t realistic, of course, but on their own terms they’re seamlessly done, and they give the movie a dreamlike, theatrical visual stylization—almost the quality of a “magic lantern” show—that is, at least for me, quite effective.
The dialogue and performances have the blunt, declamatory earnestness of a school play, but this, intentional or not, has a certain effectiveness as well. It’s compelling in the way a vigorously-performed school play can sometimes be. There are a couple of name actors in the cast—Penelope Ann Miller as Mary Todd Lincoln and Bruce Davison as Seward—but most of the cast was unknown to me. TV journeyman Tom Amandes plays Lincoln, while a young fellow with the striking name of Lea Coco plays Lamon.
Neither star managed, for me, to be deeply convincing as a 19th-Century man (at one point Lamon refers to John Wilkes Booth as a “blackguard,” carefully pronouncing it “black guard”). But, again, this doesn’t really matter—both make likable, attractive pageant figures. The movie also contains some fine music, and Amandes gets to deliver the Gettysburg Address in its entirety, which means we get to reflect on what a masterly specimen of the speechwriter’s art it is.
There are also a number of strange episodes, as when Lincoln, at the request of his wife, attends a séance, and reacts to a supposed message from beyond—meant to be comforting and encouraging—with withering anger. I couldn’t say how accurate this stuff is—the veracity of Lamon’s sometimes self-serving memoirs are a matter of debate among Lincoln scholars, and in any case I don’t know how closely the Litvaks followed these sources. But it’s memorable, anyway.
And now comes the indie Saving Lincoln, which plays February 16 through 18 at FilmBar in Phoenix. Directed by Salvador Litvak, who wrote the script with his wife, Nina Davidovitch Litvak, it’s an account of Lincoln’s long and intimate friendship with Ward Hill Lamon, an ebullient Virginian who was first a law crony of Abe’s, but later served as U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, and Lincoln’s unofficial but frequent bodyguard and companion.
Students of low-budget filmmaking are likely to be fascinated by Saving Lincoln’s ingenious solution to the problem of making an historical epic for (reportedly) under a million dollars. The actors were shot in front of a green-screen, with the backgrounds added later, many of them derived from historical photographs. The results aren’t realistic, of course, but on their own terms they’re seamlessly done, and they give the movie a dreamlike, theatrical visual stylization—almost the quality of a “magic lantern” show—that is, at least for me, quite effective.
The dialogue and performances have the blunt, declamatory earnestness of a school play, but this, intentional or not, has a certain effectiveness as well. It’s compelling in the way a vigorously-performed school play can sometimes be. There are a couple of name actors in the cast—Penelope Ann Miller as Mary Todd Lincoln and Bruce Davison as Seward—but most of the cast was unknown to me. TV journeyman Tom Amandes plays Lincoln, while a young fellow with the striking name of Lea Coco plays Lamon.
Neither star managed, for me, to be deeply convincing as a 19th-Century man (at one point Lamon refers to John Wilkes Booth as a “blackguard,” carefully pronouncing it “black guard”). But, again, this doesn’t really matter—both make likable, attractive pageant figures. The movie also contains some fine music, and Amandes gets to deliver the Gettysburg Address in its entirety, which means we get to reflect on what a masterly specimen of the speechwriter’s art it is.
There are also a number of strange episodes, as when Lincoln, at the request of his wife, attends a séance, and reacts to a supposed message from beyond—meant to be comforting and encouraging—with withering anger. I couldn’t say how accurate this stuff is—the veracity of Lamon’s sometimes self-serving memoirs are a matter of debate among Lincoln scholars, and in any case I don’t know how closely the Litvaks followed these sources. But it’s memorable, anyway.
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