Dramas of World-Changing Events

Oftentimes, when watching action movies that pride themselves in the accuracy of their simulations, I think that they are asking us to believe in events that, if true, would each be the greatest event in modern history, with the hero rising into the heights through a blizzard of tickertape. Think of a Die Hard, Speed, Indiana Jones, or even a Rocky (in the real world, he'd run for Governor--Pennsylvania, I guess--and win!) Why go to so much trouble for a story that couldn't possibly be real in this world?

No, I don't get it.

Anyway, there are some stories out there that really are of world-historical importance. Let's look at how a couple of them play out as dramatic fodder.

Recount

This made-for-TV debuted on HBO over the weekend. In spite of the significance of the events, Gore v. Bush is not terrain which has been mined excessively.

The hero of this well-casted dramatization was Ron Klain, former chief of staff for VP Gore, who became the Gore campaign's chief lawyer in Florida (played by Kevin Spacey). This is Klain's story: Election-night, including catching the VP stageside that night in Nashville to stop him from publicly conceding, is told mostly in arcs moving outward from his point of view, and his POV predominates in the remainder as well. There are some scenes set within the Republican camp which are honest attempts but appear founded on guesswork.

As reported elsewhere (and in real life), it's Laura Dern as Katherine Harris who steals the show and provides comic relief. Tom Wilkinson provides an excellent Jim Baker. The movie tastefully keeps both Gore and Bush out of the line of the camera, and its editing brings in plenty of real news spots (maybe too many, on re-thinking). David Boies' role was very accurately included in the story as the brilliant hired-gun lawyer who gave the Democratic case its best shot with the Supreme Court. So, overall, I'd rate it very highly as docudrama--plausible, if not unbiased.

I respect the screenwriters' efforts to explain the context of the Court's decision within the flow of the principal story, which related to the counting of ballots in Florida and Klain's leadership in keeping the Gore campaign's fight going. The moral Klain finally accepts, spoken verbatim at some point, is: "At some point you have to admit you can't win--even if you win." That advice could hardly be more timely for a certain leading lady of the currently-running drama.

They had a little trouble with the Epilogue, a doubtful event (as in, I doubt it occurred) in which Klain and Baker meet on the airport tarmac before each boards his hired jet to go back home. A little better would be a little scrutiny of how each of the Supremes now views his/her role in this fiasco, including Scalia's "Get over it".

Aye, there's the rub.

The Drama of Lincoln

I think Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a 700-page "treatment" for a movie script, and she knows it. If I were a producer I'd have already commenced negotiations with her, though I don't imagine she'll yield the rights easily.

The basic story frame of Team of Rivals is the four principal candidates for the 1860 nomination: former Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln, Judge Edward Bates of Missouri, Senator William Henry Seward of New York, and Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. They come together, at Lincoln's persistent invitation, into key roles in his Cabinet--a fractious bunch brought together to personify Lincoln's intention to hold together various party blocs, as he went into the crisis which started immediately upon his taking office with the Southern state secessions. The emphasis is on their family lives, how events brought them into the same arena at that crucial time, and the events of the Civil War through their perpectives.

She supplies all the ingredients for that, including numerous anecdotes humorous and tragic and easy-to-follow shooting sequences. There's even a scene where Lincoln dreams of himself, out of body, viewing his own tomb. The assassination itself includes a simultaneous assault on Seward in his home (cut back and forth as John Wilkes Booth silently closes on Ford Theater's Presidential box). An intruder brazenly comes to the Seward's house pretending to bear medicine (Seward had been injured badly in a carriage accident recently), then pulls out his pistol and knife and takes on all comers. Seward was badly slashed in the face, and his son Fred nearly killed by pistol-whipping.

Oh. I just consulted IMDb (International Movie Data Base) to see what movies on Lincoln's drama have been made. The good news: nothing since the 1940's Abraham Lincoln of Illinois (Henry Fonda as the Young Abe Lincoln).

The bad news--real bad--which I found when I dug a bit deeper, is this listing:
Lincoln (2009).
Directed by Steven Spielberg [no less].
Liam Neeson in the lead role.
Writers: Doris Kearns Goodwin (biography); Tony Kushner (screenplay).

Well, nothing really bad about any of that. Except that they were so far ahead--"Been there--done that" far ahead--of me.

Spielbergian excess, usually a bit over the top, will be merely appropriate to this tale. Just think of this ending, straight from the book: Elderly Leo Tolstoy, visiting remote Northern Caucausus tribesmen in the early 20th century, telling dramatic tales of the past--Napoleon, and Caesar. They ask, though, for him to tell them of "that great ruler of the world," Lincoln. Tolstoy's answer includes this quote from an interview he gave later in New York to The World (February, 1908):

... Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country--bigger than all the Presidents together...we are still too near to his greatness, but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

So, one more reason to look forward to 2009.

As for Tolstoy, not shabby praise coming from the guy who still probably gets the most votes as #1 on the all-time novelist list.

Born a Unionist Democrat from Kaintuck', I've always objected to the Illinois license plate: "Land of Lincoln" (Lincoln's birthplace log cabin being, of course, in Kentucky). Now I see that I was wrong all along to feel that way: All of America is "Land of Lincoln", and we all have claim to a piece of his legacy (which, as the book carefully shows, was the whole point of Lincoln's career: Legacy. Legacy. Legacy.)

Barack Obama (I love the recent bit he offered about how his first name is, essentially, the same as the Hebrew "Baruch") has just as much claim to being Abraham's progeny as anyone not directly descended from Robert Todd Lincoln (Abe's only child surviving to make it to adulthood).