Sally Field is First Lady Mary Todd "Lincoln"

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2013?) is one of those movies that I always forget about due to its long long gestation period. I swear I've been hearing about it as long as Jodie Foster's Flora Plum or Jodie Foster's Leni Reifenstahl or a few of Terrence Malick's movies before they surfaced. Will it ever get made? Probably. This is Spielberg we're talking about and he's familiar with the green light. The biopic is now one small step closer to filming. Deadline reports that Sally Field is in as our seventeenth* First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Spielberg says that Sally Field was always his first choice. I don't believe or disbelieve this exactly but I find it amusing that virtually every casting announcement for any movie (not specifically this one) comes with "they were our first choice all along" which simply can't be true 90% of the time we hear it else there would be very few auditions or screen tests ever held and precious little for casting directors to do other than fill up the bit roles and very little for management and representation to do other than negotiate.

At first the news felt odd and easily snarkable like "Sally Field co-starring with Daniel Day-Lewis? She's moving up in the world!" but then I quickly remembered that people -- apparently even myself. For shame -- are always underestimating her talent, probably because she's a "cute" actress as it were, and has been for her entire career. But I've seen enough of her work to know I shouldn't underestimate her. She's already proven herself on stage (she was a-ma-zing in a difficult role in The Goat or Who is Sylvia?), small screen (Emmys) and big screen (Oscars). She's one of those talents that "transfers" as it were. Plus: Daniel Day-Lewis isn't the only one with two Oscars in this marriage.

If you read up on Mary Todd Lincoln you'll find she was a pretty interesting woman with a very dramatic life: Her own family was torn up by the Civil War as she came from a border state, she outlived nearly all of her children, she was plagued by headaches and erratic behavior which some historians believe indicates that she was a manic depressive or bipolar). You have to wonder why some First Ladies don't get their own biopics.

The most peculiar thing about the casting is probably their age difference. Sally Field is 11 years older than Daniel Day-Lewis and we don't often see casting flip the gender/age disparity equation; Mary was 10 years younger than Abraham.

Here is the trailer to  Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) which netted Raymond Massey and Oscar nomination for Best Actor (Ruth Gordon was not nominated as Mary Todd). John Ford's Young Lincoln (1939) the year before was only Oscar nominated for the screenplay.

No movie about Lincoln has been an Oscar powerhouse but you never know with that cast and director.

But First...
Spielberg's Lincoln is long enough away that perhaps we should be talking about Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012) instead. Itopens in 14 months and stars Meryl Streep's future son-in-law Benjamin Walker as Honest Abe. He's apparently cornered the market on blood splattered presidents. His breakthrough role was in the play "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" on Broadway (for which he turned down a role in X-Men: First Class) and all I can say about him is you're in for such a treat when you see him on the big screen. Major charisma he has. Big stardom awaits.

Benjamin Walker heads the cast of "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson"

*Abraham Lincoln was the 16th US President but Mary Todd was actually the 17th First Lady since President #10 John Tyler remarried while in office after the death of his first wife.

Distant Relatives: Jaws and True Grit

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through theme and ask what their similarities/differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema. Please note that hereafter be SPOILERS AHEAD.

Three characters in search of a killer

If there’s one notable difference between the original 1969 True Grit and the Coens’ version, it’s the sense of nihilism and meaninglessness in the world the Coens create. Of course the Coens have long been the kings of nihilistic worlds, and it says something that True Grit provides one of their most meaning filled realities. Still when all is done, in the Coen version, we’re left wondering what it was all worth. The John Wayne version, which suffers in no small part from being surrounded by a sea of bleak late 60’s cinematic masterpieces, feels more like a tale of good guys an bad guys. And while the Coen version has good guys and bad guys it feels more like a tale of how reality itself, the natural world is out to get us all.
 
But we’re not here to compare two versions of the same story, we’re here to compare distant relatives. Which brings us to a film where the natural world is quite literally out to get us, in the form of Steven Spielberg’s antagonizing great white shark (nicknamed Bruce) as it terrorizes the citizens of Amity island. Jaws and True Grit present us with all kinds of similarities in terms of structure, character and the eternal theme of mankind’s struggle against the natural world.

Both are revenge films, though there’s something that doesn’t seem quite right about that. They’re not in the same company as Mad Max or Kill Bill because the singular intense insanity of the vengeance-seeker is not the most integral element of the story here. In fact, there isn’t a sole vengeance seeker. In both cases there are three individuals who serve different purposes and convey a wide scope of what could posses a person to go out hunting for “justice.”

Rub a dub dub
 
We can start with the characters who get to be the audience's surrogate. Jaws’ Chief Brody (Roy Schieder) and True Grit's Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) have to present some sort of righteous motive for us to get behind. Mattie’s detached desire to avenge her father and Brody’s obssessive quest to kill a shark don’t exactly invite us to cozy up. But it’s the amorality of others around them that throw new  empathetic light on their pursuits. Those who have the power to bring about justice and prevent future bloodshed have no interest in doing so. So we have to get behind Mattie and Brody. Theirs may not be the best way, but it’s the only way.
 
When we discussed Midnight Cowboy and The Fighter, we talked about the relationships between cinematic duos and how the straight man/comic relief model has had lasting influence. We find in these two films that our teams of three follow a similar mold. The hero is our center, the most rational of the characters, the one whose desires we are most likely to understand. He or she is flanked on one side by a man with more “noble” motives like science or avenging the death of a Texas Ranger. This man is snarky, sarcastic, rather full of himself and his noble goals, though underneath harbors a somewhat more base motivation, money or pure adrenaline. We may call him our uber-hero since in his own mind he’s far more worthy of his cause than anyone else. On the other flank of our hero is our anti-hero, a man with an obsession, usually courtesy a past trauma. Anti-authority, often drunk and wild, he is not hindered by the morality of the other two men. By standard anti-hero rules, he has none. He cares not for the means only the ends. Perhaps it’s going too far to suggest an id, ego, superego connection. But there it is. Quint, Brody, Hooper. Rooster, Mattie, LaBoeuf. Anti-hero, hero, uber-hero.

Into the woods

Both films follow a similar structure too. The first kill, the inciting kill, happens as a prologue, before the main title even appears. Then an act’s worth of gathering evidence, momentum, and a posse and it’s off into the water or wilderness. Here, the randomness of nature is the enemy. And while it might seem odd to compare the instincts of a predatory animal to the free will of a man, consider Tom Chaney when we see him. He is practically an animal; gruff, dim-witted, hairy, smelly and quite frankly, a disappointment. If Bruce the Shark, by lack of a frontal cortex is no Tom Chaney, then Tom Chaney by lack of chutzpah and screen presence is certainly no Bruce the Shark.
 
In both cases, we’re left with the uncertainty of a happy ending. In terms of the prevention of future attacks, the sparing of future victims, indeed both missions are a success. But what of it? Jaws is a happy ending with a question mark, one where our rejoicing is tarnished by remembering what was lost, who was killed. True Grit is a happy ending with ellipses, one that gives us justice served and then follows it with the pointless onward march of time, lives suddenly devoid of a vengeful goal falling into parody or banality.

So, is there a reason why in thirty five years, happiness’s cold side dish has changed from sacrifice to uncertainty? We can consider the films’ directors. For Steven Spielberg, child of World War II, the long sad road to the other side of the rainbow is a constant recurrence in his films. Jaws, made in the waning days of Vietnam asks of the quest for justice “what is the sacrifice?” The Coens, prophets of pointlessness and futility, coming of age in the cold war, coming to prominence during the war on terror, make a film about the quest for justice and ask “what is the point?”