The History in Lincoln

NY Times: Confronting the Fact of Fiction and the Fiction of Fact

One of the strongest objections to “Lincoln” has been that it focuses on elite politics rather than popular action, thus denying the agency of African-Americans in their own emancipation. This is an argument about the meaning of the events depicted in — and left out of — the film and about how Mr. Spielberg and the writer Tony Kushner have shaped the facts to their own ends. Their placement of Connecticut’s congressional delegation on the wrong side of history has upset some residents of that state, but the deeper objection to “Lincoln” has to do with the way it turns the history of African-American freedom into the story of a heroic white man. “Lincoln” isn't “Mississippi Burning,” but each is part of a larger debate about who owns history.