The first - person account of grappling with terminal illness proves to be startlingly fertile ground for cinema when juxtaposed with the other strand of the film, an impressionistic
fictionalisation of everyday events like meetings with doctors and friends
in which Lili Taylor plays the protagonist.
Two major goals of the film seem to be to faithfully document a crucial moment
in history through entertaining
fictionalisation and to use Lincoln's involvement as a way of shining some light on the type of person he was.