Geoffrey O'Brien reviews Lincoln, claiming that it "manages to instill an authentic wonderment" about Lincoln while also being attuned to the gritty details of 19th century politics:
]]>Politics, for the most part, has been something that happens off-screen, either too tedious or too depressingly cynical for its mechanisms to be exposed in their full particulars; presidents are more likely to be shown in moments of public grandeur than in scenes of backroom horse-trading. Perhaps it is the era of cable news, with its permanent theater of politics, that has made it possible to engage more vigorously with the kind of historical detail in which Lincoln revels. An audience that has endured the protracted dramas surrounding the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the raising of the debt ceiling, and followed the statistics of political polling as if it were a new national pastime, is certainly ready to contemplate the overt and covert tactics involved in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.