Abrahams cussing

[Liz Rosenthal]

Considering the violence of the Civil War - not to mention the violence of slavery - the amount of violence in the Lincoln movie seemed minimal to me, and mainly confined to the film's very first scene.

Did Lincoln sometimes cuss and often tell off-color stories? Yes, he did. And the reason why I was pleased to hear the little bit of cussing and sliver of potty humor is that these things went with Lincoln the Man. Despite the fact that the plot line concerned his effort to get the 13th Amendment passed, the movie was, more than anything, about Lincoln the Man. If he had been portrayed in a cleansed, staid fashion I would have been hugely disappointed.

Portraying Lincoln in this way was not an iconoclastic move nor a conduit to cheap laughs. It showed him as a living, breathing human being and how he handled day-to-day life, from his domestic trials to the method by which he handled people in attempting to attain his far-reaching goals.

Many of Lincoln's contemporaries were off-put by his informal nature and manner of speaking, even the way he walked and moved. The fact that some people today are reacting similarly to these aspects of Lincoln's nature shows, I think, how successful the makers of the Lincoln movie were in offering an almost spooky level of authenticity.