|DREAMWORKS, 20TH CENTURY FOX, DAVID JAMES|
Daniel Day-Lewis is shown in a scene from "Lincoln."
No figure in American history has maintained a more prominent place in the collective consciousness than Abraham Lincoln.
The image of his bearded face and top hat is burned into our brains.
We start learning about him as schoolchildren—how he rose from his meager beginnings, mostly self-taught, to become our 16th president, lead the nation through the horrors of the Civil War, free the slaves and die by an assassin's hand.
He is a towering figure, an icon, known to the average person more for what he did than how he accomplished those feats or who he was.
In "Lincoln," Steven Spielberg's masterful film covering the last three months and change of Lincoln's life, we see the politician at work, maneuvering and exerting all his influence to push through the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) and end the Civil War.