An amusement park ride through Lincolnland

Despite the paeans and choruses of praise, I'm not on board with Spielberg's "Lincoln," which, despite Daniel Day-Lewis's great performance which will probably earn him an Oscar (sorry, Denzel) was to me a pompous and pious bore. Yeah, I was kind of interested in learning details about this moment in history - Lincoln's efforts to secure passage of the 13th amendment, and it's always great to hear (or read) the words of Lincoln; his Shakespearean orations and his folksy Midwest tales, which Day-Lewis captures with a slightly nasal, Midwest accent, Lincoln the super-smart hick played perfectly, who holds in his head an amazing store of knowledge, all the more disarming and surprising because of his bumbling and folksy demeanor. But is it a surprise to anyone to see Lincoln portrayed this? Does this movie add anything new to our understanding of the way Lincoln thought and acted? And can it possibly surprise anyone to see that in the 19th century politicians bought votes by promising patronage jobs? The movie is about the various conflicts of forces around the Amendment abolishing slavery: Lincoln wants it to pass because he fears that once the war ends and the Confederate states rejoin the Union it cannot pass; also because he abhors slavery (though does not necessarily believe in racial equality - which to their credit, Spielberg and Kushner make evident); also, I believe, thought "Lincoln" does not emphasize this, because he believed a U.S. with both slave and free states could not endure - his main motive, always, was saving the Union (that's not entirely clear from this movie). So the movie veers from self-righteous speechifying, rather improbably scenes of Congressmen screaming at one another on the floor of the House, and, for "comic relief," a small gang of partisans that Lincoln hires to buy off recalcitrant lame-duck Democrats. Ultimately, the movie felt to me lik a civics lesson, like the kind of "educational" film they'd show back in 7th grade when I was a kid; it's somewhat interesting because the events are "real," but it was of minimal interest, to me, as a movie: insufficient conflict and tension (none), despite Day-Lewis's bravado performance the acting is all caricature - and I'm not sure whether D-L's role should be called acting or impersonating, for that matter; and worst of all, will someone please put a stop to John Williams's horrible scores?! Those incessant horns, rising to a crescendo with very uttered piety - how pitifully sanctimonious. Those fiddles every time there's a moment of levity. Please, let the drama just unfold, let us feel it for ourselves - Williams's score is to movies what Disney World is to the National Park System. The one thing you do get from a Spielberg movie, always, is high production values - as in the terrible War Horse of recent years - so if that's enough for you, the costume drama, the battlefield scene that gruesomely opens the film, the muddy Washington during war - then, OK, you've got what you paid for: an amusement park ride through Lincolnland.