By Yasser Latif Hamdani
(Some spoilers- beware)
"Lincoln" v. "Gandhi"
A few days ago, I watched Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" starring amongst others the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. It was one of the most extraordinary films I have seen in my life and what is more is that it wasn't preachy or unrealistic - quite unlike Richard Attenborough's rather mediocre film "Gandhi" which distorted history and presented the subject as an infallible saint instead of the shrewd politician, very capable of cunning and cant, that Gandhi was. Sir Ben Kingsley did a terribly unconvincing job as Gandhi but to be fair that film fails on account of a weak script and the fact that it was naked hagiography masquerading, but failing, as history. On the contrary Lincoln was a political film about a politician who was human but whose integrity shone through even as he was fighting a grave battle for his nation. Consequently Daniel Day Lewis was superb and masterly as Abraham Lincoln. One reason for this might be that this film itself is for an increasingly aware audience in the information age, as oppose to the naive gaping and ignorant buffoons who crowded cinema halls in the early 1980s (I can only imagine how cinema goers could have reacted without the ability of doing some basic fact checking back then).
(Some spoilers- beware)
"Lincoln" v. "Gandhi"
A few days ago, I watched Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" starring amongst others the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. It was one of the most extraordinary films I have seen in my life and what is more is that it wasn't preachy or unrealistic - quite unlike Richard Attenborough's rather mediocre film "Gandhi" which distorted history and presented the subject as an infallible saint instead of the shrewd politician, very capable of cunning and cant, that Gandhi was. Sir Ben Kingsley did a terribly unconvincing job as Gandhi but to be fair that film fails on account of a weak script and the fact that it was naked hagiography masquerading, but failing, as history. On the contrary Lincoln was a political film about a politician who was human but whose integrity shone through even as he was fighting a grave battle for his nation. Consequently Daniel Day Lewis was superb and masterly as Abraham Lincoln. One reason for this might be that this film itself is for an increasingly aware audience in the information age, as oppose to the naive gaping and ignorant buffoons who crowded cinema halls in the early 1980s (I can only imagine how cinema goers could have reacted without the ability of doing some basic fact checking back then).
