Lincoln, personal and political

The release of Lincoln has engendered much discussion in the press about the continued relevance of the film's political themes. Commentators have likened the challenges faced by President Lincoln in a divided Congress to Barack Obama's problems with Republicans as the latter president begins his second term. Other writers have, with mixed effect, drawn attention to the glaring adoption of corrupt practices to secure a constitutional amendment for the ages.

In all the commentary, however, another strand of the film remains unexplored, a rather obvious point given that Tony Kushner, the screenwriter of Lincoln, is also the writer of the Pulitzer-winning Angels in America, a brooding meditation on the ravages of AIDS on a group of gay men in New York, 1985.
 

The political drama in Lincoln revolves around the compromises that the president had perforce to make to get his beloved legislation outlawing slavery passed by the Congress. In a film that comes perilously close to disrespecting Lincoln's memory were it not for the grandness of his fight, Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays Lincoln, is shown lying to the House when he signs an order proclaiming that the federal government was not expecting negotiators from the South to discuss the end of hostilities.

There are other compromises. Thaddeus Stevens, a Radical Republican leader played by Tommy Lee Jones, recommends equality for all men "before the law", and not in other matters, to enable the passage of the 13th Amendment. Disparaged as a traitor by his colleagues in the radical wing of the Republican Party, Stevens justifies his action as a necessity to obtain incremental reform.

But the film's real triumph comes in a latter scene. Towards the end, Mr Jones is shown trudging back home with a copy of the Bill just passed in the House. He has requested the House Speaker to lend him the original draft for a day since he wants to show it to his housekeeper, Lydia Smith, played by Epatha Merkerson. Ms Merkerson helps Mr Jones take off his coat as he boasts the passage of a Bill that will changer her - and her descendants' - life. 

Then, in a masterly scene, Mr Jones is shown readying for the night and getting into bed, as the camera slowly zooms out from his position to show, reclining next to him, a proud-looking Ms Merkerson. To the uninitiated viewer, the fact of Stevens and Smith's faux matrimonial arrangement comes as a shock, precisely because it is so unexpected. Even to the 21st-century, post-racial viewer, the film's journey thus far has been a saga of such entrenched racism that a white man sharing his bed with an African American woman comes across as nothing short of revolutionary.

How does Mr Kushner fit into this? It is not far-fetched to imagine that he, who selects his projects with much care, chose to work with Steven Spielberg on this film because it heralds the difficulty of another landmark law close to his heart: gay marriage. It is impossible to watch Lincoln without noticing its umbilical affiliation to the gay marriage debate and the film's sly use of filmic techniques to drive home this point.

Is the real revolution for gay rights in America - and by association the rest of the world - then dependent on the backroom shenanigans of a gay politician who assists a reformist president in the implementation of a federal law permitting gay marriage? Barack Obama, during his oath-taking for the second term, referred to Stonewall, the gay bar in New York that witnessed riots by patrons protesting police high-handedness in 1969. If there is one president who can bring a federal law giving gays the right to marry, it is Mr Obama. 

The situation as of now looks promising. Three American states legalised same-sex marriage by popular vote on the same day they re-elected Mr Obama. The election results have forced Republicans to acknowledge the demographic change sweeping America, a change they must contend with if they are to regain political ground. The Republicans' views on a host of social issues, primarily gay marriage, will decide their electoral acceptability.

We don't know yet how this will pan out. To future generations, the debate over gay marriage might seem as pointless as the antebellum attitudes towards black rights look to us. One hundred and fifty years from now, a filmmaker covering the viciously partisan gay debate might once again see fit to juxtapose the political fights of the day against a private love story. In doing so, he, like Messrs Spielberg and Kushner, would showcase how lasting change is advanced by the fortuitous coming together of the personal and the political.