Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is not a great film, and people
shouldn’t feel muscled, in the general approbation, into saying
it is. But it’s a good one, which is always a surprise and
delight these days, and it is good it’s being so widely
appreciated. This is Hollywood taking history seriously, taking
political history seriously, and even showing respect for
politics itself. That should be encouraged.      The film has a
dark palette. Spielberg got a little carried away with Victorian
darkness, when even then they had a sun. The period detail, how
people dressed and rooms looked, is exquisite, and must have
cost a lot. The direction is somber, maybe heavy and slow.
Sometimes when Spielberg is trying to show he’s serious it’s an
awkward thing to witness. The screenplay seems like chunks of a
longer and maybe better work that had to be edited down and
jammed into a reasonable run- time. There is a lot of one-
speech-after-another, one-bit-of-jammed-in-exposition-after-
another. But the script meets the challenge