'Lincoln' aims to enlighten as it entertains

Shakespeare, of course, is the master of rip-roaring historical drama. His plays rearrange national chronicles to discover enduing human patterns — some good, mostly bad — of rulers and those who would overthrow them. It's a more universal approach than, say, that of filmmaker Oliver Stone, who is drawn to cracking history's secret conspiratorial code.

Kushner's screenplay, as deeply humane as it is dryly political, is replete with Shakespeare quotes, which are uttered by Lincoln in a manner more Stanislavskian than Elizabethan. As externally driven as he is, Lincoln's interiority feel vast, almost bottomless. One would have to go to the tragedies to find a character who can match it.

Shakespeare's history plays register the anxieties of his politically paranoid age, but they tend to shy away from direct commentary of ongoing royal strife. A working artist, he knew which side his bread was buttered on and had an uncanny ability to make conservatives and revolutionaries alike feel as though he were on their side.

The intention behind "Lincoln" seems more interventionist. It wants to instruct mainstream moviegoers while flattering their sophistication. Spielberg has a genius for driving home points in a way that is simultaneously obvious and bold. An example is the bedroom scene between Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), the radical abolitionist in the House of Representatives, and his black housekeeper, Lydia Smith (S. Epatha Merkerson), in which the two intimately exult in the 13th Amendment's passage.

The contrasting sensibilities at work in "Lincoln" — part Shakespeare, part Oprah Winfrey — may not cohere into a seamless work of art, but the film's heavy-handed touches have a noble design: Predictable emotional buttons are pushed to challenge our civic engagement and to restore faith in the often unseemly democratic process.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

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