Lincoln: Movie critic series No. 6, many irrelevant scenes included to show the life and character of Lincoln

The movie is all about the passing of Amendment 13; the last 4 months of Lincoln’s life.  But it does have many scenes, irrelevant to the passing of Amendment 13, showing the life and character of Lincoln as we know it.  One can see Lincoln was reading with Tad (Thomas, he had no hair as a baby, so Lincolns called him Tad as in tadpole) who donned his military uniform (in the movie, but not in this scene) as he was in life at the White House. By the way Daniel Day-Lewis should have put on his spectacles for this scene.  One scene showing Robert Lincoln (I never like him, that will be another post) is frustrated of not being able to enlist to fight; Tad, with his military uniform on, said he can.  I am sure this didn’t actually happen, but quite an ingenious idea.  I would give it a thumb up.  The Bard did many dramatic scenes like this in his history plays.

Lincoln & Tad in movie

Lincoln & Tad in life

Mary Lincoln took Tad to Europe 3 years after Lincoln was assassinated; they stayed for 3 years.  Tad died in Chicago shortly after they returned from Europe.  He probably died of tuberculosis, although some say pneumonia.  Mary went to France again later.  It is probably not coincidental that Jacqueline Kennedy also left the States and went to Europe (after Robert Kennedy was assassinated).  It must be heart broken to live in a country where their husbands were assassinated.

As we know Lincolns went to Ford Theater on that fateful April 14, 1865, but Grover’s Theater (which Lincoln also frequented) scene was shown in the movie as Tad went to see Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp there that night.  The arrangement was to avoid showing Lincoln was shot directly; it is still painful and traumatic for the collected American memory nearly 150 years later.

In the JFK Library and Museum one goes through a dark passage in which several very small TVs showing the car ride in Dallas November 22, 1963.