YMMV / Lincoln

• Applicability: Several theories were raised about the film's relation to current modern-day issues, such as if it had a message about bipartisanship, social causes, pro-Obama in that it's about African-American equality, or pro-Republican in that the protagonists are primarily Republicans ^note  Although obviously the parties of the mid-19th century are very different than today’s. The modern parties arguably took shape during the Wilson administration, half a century after this film takes place. Even the State of Israel got in on it, after Prime Minister Ben Netanyahu and his aides saw the film and discussed both Lincoln's methods and the 1864 Congress's relation to their own 2013 political mixup.
• Award Snub: Lincoln was expected to be the heavyweight of the 85th Oscars, leading with twelve nominations, but it only ended up winning two, Best Production Design and Best Actor. And even then, the Production Design win was seen as more of a slight surprise, compared to other lavish period pieces like Anna Karenina and Les Misérables (2012). Some were also disappointed that Tommy Lee Jones didn't win Best Supporting Actor for his fiery, scene-stealing performance as Thaddeus Stevens, and there's a sizable contingent of fans who were quite cranky that Sally Field didn't win for Best Supporting Actress^note though the fact that she already has two Oscars did dampen the crankiness a bit.
• Awesome Music: After the passage of the 13th Amendment its supporters start singing the "Battle Cry of Freedom" in the Capitol and on the streets. The congressmen actually start doing it while still inside the Capitol.
  • Most of the soundtrack, really. John Williams has outdone himself, again.
• Ending Fatigue: A couple of reviewers (and Samuel L. Jackson along with Conan O'Brien and Jack White) argued that the film could have ended with the shot of Lincoln leaving the White House for Ford's Theater, rather than continuing on to the assassination which isn't even depicted. These scenes may have been a remnant of earlier incarnations of the script, which covered the whole of Lincoln's presidency.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • In a movie hyped for Daniel Day-Lewis' deeply committed and highly accurate portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, it's Tommy Lee Jones' Thaddeus Stevens that steals the show.
  • Also, James Spader as W.N. Bilboe, one of the lobbyists working to help pass the amendment.
  • Lee Pace turns in quite the performance as resident asshole Fernando Wood.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Slavery is abolished, but historically, the post-war South brutally crushed the freed slaves and their descendants under a despicable racist tyranny that lasted an entire century, while simultaneously painting themselves as "victims of Northern aggression" at the hands of "monsters" like Thaddeus Stevens. Thankfully, historians have more or less debunked the "Lost Cause of the Confederacy", and Stevens' reputation is on the rise, largely thanks to this film.
• Genius Bonus: Possibly. In the scene where Robert returns, he is greeted enthusiastically by Tad, who starts chattering away at him while somebody shoves a petition at him about his insolvency proceedings, asking if the President can look at it. What Tad is saying is almost completely incomprehensible but listening closely you can tell he's talking about Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species. ^note  This may have been intended as a brief nod to the fact that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day.
  Tad. She's asleep, probably, they went to see Avonia Jones last night in a play about Israelites.^note This would have been Leah the Forsaken by Augustin Daly. Daddy's meeting with a famous scientist now ^note (probably regarding the National Academy of Sciences, which was incorporated in 1863 with Agassiz as a charter member and first Foreign Secretary) and he's nervous because of how smart the man is and the man is angry ^note (Agassiz was one of the last great natural scientists to resist Darwin's theory) about 'cause there's a new book that Sam Beckwith says is about finches, and finches' beaks, about how they change, and it takes years and years and years, and...
  • His incomprehensibility may also be a nod to the fact that in real life, Tad Lincoln had a disability that made it difficult to speak.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Much is made in the movie of the family's coping with the recent death of middle son Willie. History buffs will know that adorable Tad himself lived only six more years after the events of the film. Coupled with the deaths of Willie and their second son Eddie in 1850 (at the age of only four), Robert was the only one of the Lincolns' four sons to survive into adulthood.
  • Mary says Abraham will have to have her committed to an asylum if Robert is killed in the war. Her relationship with Robert degraded after Abraham's death, and in 1875, Robert initiated a court proceeding to have her committed. She Attempted Suicide, then shamed her son with enough negative publicity that he allowed her to leave the asylum and retire to live with her sister.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Lincoln is not the first film to speculate that Thaddeus Stevens was married-by-common-law to his African-American maid. The Birth of a Nation depicted it first with a Captain Ersatz of Stevens but used it to just further discredit him, while this film depicts it as a very sweet thing.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Gangs of New York, DDL played Bill the Butcher, a crime lord who was vehemently anti-Lincoln, and is seen throwing a knife at a Lincoln campaign poster on Election Day. Also, his character's main rival in that film was played by Liam Neeson (see What Could Have Been).
    • Also, Fernando Wood, a Democratic rival to Lincoln's party, was notoriously supported in New York by the Dead Rabbits gang in Real Life.
  • This serious, close to history biopic came out the same year as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
  • Hal Holbrook, who plays Francis Preston Blair, played Lincoln in the miniseries' Lincoln (1976) and North and South, Book II (1986).
  • This movie in general was released by Disney in collaboration with 20th Century Fox. Come 2017, Disney had purchased it and has had it in possession since 2019.
  • Much is made of Robert's determination to serve in the Union Army over his parents' objections. In Real Life, Robert became U.S. Secretary of War to Presidents Garfield and Arthur.
• Iron Woobie: LINCOLN. WILL. FREE. THE. SLAVES. No matter how much it tears him apart.
• Memetic Mutation: Lincoln has been doing well in theaters...◊
• Nightmare Fuel: The depiction of the fighting in The American Civil War.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Jackie Earle Haley's very brief but very memorable performance as Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy.
  • Robert E. Lee, even though, and maybe especially because, he's The Voiceless.
  • S. Epatha Merkerson as Thaddeus Stevens' longtime mistress (would've been his common law wife, if the laws of the time allowed interracial marriage) Lydia Smith. One scene, where she reads aloud the 13th Amendment, conveying how much this means to her and to every American of her race.
• Retroactive Recognition: Dane DeHaan briefly appears in the first scene as one of the Union soldiers greeting Lincoln, about two solid years before he was cast in the pivotal role of Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
  • Adam Driver, a.k.a Kylo Ren, appears as a telegraph operator with whom Lincoln has a conversation about equality.
  • David Oyelowo as Cpl. Clark, two years before headlining Selma.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Tony Kushner said that he and Spielberg saw this film as a delayed sequel to John Ford's 1940 Young Mr. Lincoln. That film showed Lincoln near the start of his career, this film shows Lincoln at the very end.
  • It also serves as one to Amazing Grace, a biopic of William Wilberforce, and his similar efforts to outlaw the slave-trade in the English Parliament.
• Stoic Woobie: Elizabeth Keckley grew up a slave, and nonchalantly tells Tad that she was beaten with a fire shovel when she was younger than him, and she lost a son in the war.
• Tear Jerker: How Tad Lincoln learned of his father's death.
• Values Resonance: Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing in The Atlantic noted that while on the surface, Lincoln was a conventional film, it was in fact wholly radical when compared to other films about the American Civil War:
  The implicit message of Lincoln (the necessity of political compromise) isn’t very radical. But when you consider the film, as a whole, against the backdrop of how America has handled the Civil War in popular culture, it is shockingly radical. It may seem ordinary to those of who study the War...but this is decidedly not the history presented in The Birth of a Nation, in Gone with the Wind, in Hell on Wheels, in Ride with the Devil...Lincoln says the Civil War is about slavery. Full Stop ...I have never seen these facts—basic history though they may—stated so forthrightly, without apology, in the sphere of mass popular culture.
  • The film emphasizes this from the beginning. The first faces you see in close-up and the first voices you hear belong to black soldiers talking to Lincoln, who is seen only vaguely from behind. The entire focus is on these men, Harold Green and Ira Clarke, and what they're telling him (and you). Ira speaks of income inequality between black and white regiments (which had just been reformed) and suggests, now that white people have gotten used to black men bearing arms, maybe in a few years they'd be able to accept black commanding officers, and "maybe in 100 years, the vote." ^note Black men's right to vote was affirmed in 1870. Black women could vote in many states, but it was not in the Constitution until 1968.

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