LINCOLN vs. HITCHCOCK

A double feature!

I was having trouble putting together my review for Lincoln, knowing I didn't like it as much as I wanted to and not quite sure why. After all, I'm a huge fan of Spielberg and his favorite cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, I love Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, and Tommy Lee Jones, and of course I have a soft spot in my heart for the music of John Williams. This movie should have knocked it out of the park for me, but it felt limp, slow, and overly polished. Then Hitchcock was released, one week later, and the two began to do battle in my head.

Both films are biopics, telling the story of a famous man. A biopic promises to show who this celebrity is outside of the public eye and on a close up, personal level. We should expect to learn something about that person that we didn't know before. This is missing from Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lewis' Lincoln, while certainly realistic, nuanced, and enjoyable, is exactly how we've all imagined the man in history class. This is a story about an extremely likable man, a hero of history, and a paragon of honesty. So naturally, I was waiting for the film to show me something dark and hidden about him. I was disappointed. We learn that his wife may have been driven partially insane through grief and that he had a rebellious son fighting to enlist without his father's permission, but there's nothing seedy whatsoever about the man himself. On the other hand, Alfred Hitchcock was a very secretive man about his personal life - most of what we know about him is from stories told by actors who worked with him. In Hitchcock, we learn about his creepy obsession with young, blonde actresses, his eating habits linked to his professional stress, and his extraordinary dependence on his wife, Alma Reville. All of this is pretty surprising for a man considered a genius and often called Britain's Greatest Film Director, and more importantly, it's severely interesting. Anthony Hopkins' Hitchcock is flawed, pitiable, and ugly. It's the first time I think I've ever seen Hopkins play a slightly stupid character, and it's refreshing. Hitchcock wins this round, as it makes a much better biopic than Lincoln.

Silhouette Battle

Both films have a considerable amount of production value, being set in a specific year of American history and portraying characters at the height of society, be it Washington or Hollywood. While they did manage to make Anthony Hopkins exactly match Hitchcock's famous profile, most of the film is shot from the front, where the make-up is considerably less believable. His lips look plastic, his double chin seems too firm, and he didn't have the unique gap in his teeth that gave Hitchcock that peculiar lisp. Helen Mirren does look very much like Ms. Reville did, albeit a bit more regal. Mirren seems to carry around the Queen's aura with her no matter which movie she's in. The actors playing Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, and Anthony Perkins dress off set exactly like they do on set for Psycho. In fact, they all move and speak like their counterparts do on set as well, lending a pretty hollow feel to the characters. For Lincoln, I couldn't tell if Day-Lewis grew those famous chin whiskers on his own or had them applied. He looks just like we want Lincoln to look, but he's messy enough that it's believable. This movie has literally hundreds of moustaches, goatees, beards, mutton chops, chin straps, soul patches, sideburns, and handlebars, every one sandwiched between a dapper hat and a three-pocket vest. The crowd scenes feel like you're in a hip Brooklyn neighborhood, but with less pink bicycles. As you might expect from a Spielberg film, the lighting is precisely sculpted in every shot, and a full orchestra scores each important moment. As far as production value goes, Lincoln blows Hitchcock out of the water.

Finally, I would be negligent if I didn't talk about how IMPORTANT a film is. Lincoln begins with a few black Union soldiers feeling honored to speak with the President. They quote his own speech back to him. They stand down in the mud, in the dark, and they are literally looking up to this charismatic, quiet man sitting on a stage with impeccable backlighting. We know immediately, as the camera slowly circles around him from behind to show his lined, thoughtful face, that this man is IMPORTANT. Hitchcock begins with a fat man in a suit standing alone, looking into the camera, and greeting the audience with a casual "Good evening." This man is not important. His appearance is comical, his speech is awkwardly slow, his sense of humor is off. The IMPORTANCE of Abraham Lincoln is the only reason Lincoln was made. It is certainly not a film about slavery; we don't see a single slave in the movie, and there's barely even one line spent on explaining why Lincoln should be so against it. This movie was made to bring the story of an IMPORTANT man to life, again, so we can all remember the nobler roots of our country and how politics used to work (the film was released on election week, after all). Hitchcock is a film about a film; an aging director wants to make another splash in his long, successful career and manages to do it by skirting censorship. While Abraham Lincoln's achievements have all sorts of ramifications for life today, including a black President, Alfred Hitchcock's success with Psycho has only led to the huge dependence of modern movies on violence to make money. Saw I through VI are the direct results of Hitchcock's work. Lincoln is undoubtedly the more IMPORTANT film, with an IMPORTANT director and IMPORTANT actors, and it will be talked about and referenced by IMPORTANT people for years to come, and it will surely win twice as many IMPORTANT Oscars as Hitchcock.

Ok, have I used the word important enough that it's lost its meaning? Good. Important is important, and this is a film for classes, historians, awards, and long discussions. But the bottom line is that Hitchcock is more fun. Psycho may have led to the deterioration of the horror genre today, but it's an incredible film all the same, as gripping now as it was in 1960. I'm in love with film because of the way it can grab an audience and coax them into feeling and thinking things they never do in real life. My favorite movies are those that work on this gut level. Hitchcock, while certainly not perfect, knows that it's a film and has fun with itself. Lincoln mostly feels like an episode of The West Wing without the zippy energy of the walking-and-talking scenes.

I ate mozzarella sticks at Lincoln. I ate falafel at Hitchcock. Let's see... While they're both fried, one is standard American fare and the other is an import from another country. Similarly, um, Lincoln was American, while Hitchcock came from England... Falafel is more IMPORTANT because of its cultural...

Forget it. This review is long enough.