Sister Mary Corita chose to answer these questions
with the words of William Sloane Coffin: «Because we love the world, we pray now, O [God], for grace to quarrel
with it, O Thou whose
lover's quarrel
with the world is the history of the world... Lord, grant us grace to quarrel
with the worship of success and power... to quarrel
with all that profanes and trivializes [people] and separates them... number us, we beseech Thee, in the ranks of those who went forth from this place longing only for those things for which Thou dost
make us long, [those] for whom the complexity of the issues only served to renew their zeal to
deal with them, [those] who alleviated pain by sharing it; and [those] who were always willing to risk something big for something good... O God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them.
mmm... a protagonist who complete dominates a long film to the detriment of context and the other players in the story (though the abolitionist, limping senator
with the black
lover does gets close to stealing the show, and is rather more interesting than the hammily - acted Lincoln); Day - Lewis acts like he's focused on getting an Oscar rather than bringing a human being to life - Lincoln as portrayed is a strangely zombie character, an intelligent, articulate zombie, but still a zombie; I greatly appreciate Spielberg's attempt to
deal with political process and I appreciate the lack of «action» but somehow the context is missing and after seeing the film I know some more facts but very little about what
makes these politicians tick; and the lighting is way too stylised, beautiful but unremittingly unreal, so the film falls between the stools of docufiction and costume drama,
with costume drama winning out; and the second subject of the film - slavery - is almost complete absent (unlike Django Unchained) except as a verbal abstraction