Though the film starts a bit slowly, with hefty doses of introduction and exposition, it gradually attains velocity, depicting politics not merely as the binary struggle between opposing forces to which we have become all too accustomed (though there are elements of this characterization as well), but as a three-dimensional puzzle to be solved. There are a handful of occasions when Spielberg lays the uplift on a bit thick, John Williams's score swelling like a bladder, but for the most part the movie is lively and full of wit. The deep and varied cast—David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haley, Tim Blake Nelson, Jared Harris, and many others—depict a compelling universe of political personalities orbiting the president. And if Tommy Lee Jones, playing Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, always comes across rather more as Tommy Lee Jones than as the iconic abolitionist—well, there are worse things.

Lincoln fares less well when it turn its focus to the president's private life, in particular wife Mary's continuing grief over the premature death of their son Willie, and both parents' resistance to the entreaties by their eldest son, Robert, that he be allowed to enlist. The humanizing purpose of these scenes is apparent enough, but here Day-Lewis is let down by his co-stars. As Robert, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is forgettable, his role considerably smaller than his billing might lead one to believe. The casting of Sally Field as Mary is more problematic. Like Jones, she is too recognizably herself; but where the script furnishes the former with countless opportunities to deploy his mordant wit, Field's relatively thankless role offers few compensations for her failure of mimesis. Contemplating history's judgment late in the film, Mary laments to her husband, "All anyone will remember is that I was crazy and I ruined your happiness." Despite the screen time afforded her, the film offers little to enrich or complicate this verdict.

Which brings us, at last, to Day-Lewis. In past great performances—as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, for instance, or Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York—Day-Lewis created figures of such simmering ferocity that they threatened to burn a hole in the screen. Here, by contrast, he wisely opts for understatement, receding gently into his characterization. Lincoln, after all, is already larger than life. The trick lies in bringing him down to a comprehensible size.

In Day-Lewis's hands, the Great Emancipator is alternatingly droll and melancholy, sure of his arguments yet eager to engage with others', part self-taught intellectual and part tricky lawyer. ("It isn't our Southern states that are in rebellion," he explains amiably at one point, "but only the rebels in our Southern states.") Most of all, he is an inveterate aphorist, ever eager to illustrate his points by spinning tales--most of them presumably tall. (Among them, he shares the funniest scatological joke about George Washington I expect ever to hear.)