This evening I saw Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Of course it has gotten much praise as a fine movie. I have seen several reviews praising Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of the President.
I have yet to read a review, though, that says much about Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. Let me say, for my own part, that she nails it. More precisely, I don't know a thing about the historical Mary Todd Lincoln. The character that she nails, perfectly, exquisitely, is Wife. Not in all the surface details, perhaps, though the hints at her spending mania are a nice touch. But the psychological characterization is scarily exact. Watch the scene where Mary falls completely to pieces and Abe threatens her with the madhouse, and you have seen any number of the shrieking fights between us over the years. I don't claim to have struck as honorable a figure as Day-Lewis's Lincoln in these arguments, but Field's Mary is perfect.
And if you are able to see a kind of greatness in her hysteria -- a jagged, rough-hewn grandeur in the sheer magnitude of her suffering, something that compels your respect and awe even against your will -- then you will have some idea what I saw in Wife all those years. You will see -- beyond all the mundane practicalities -- a deeper part of why I stayed so long.
P.S. added in September, 2021: For purposes of future retrieval, you can think of this post as if it were subtitled "Movie meme 3.5."
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