I have always been tickled by the fact that my birthday  is a public holiday in the US ( mainly because I share it with Abraham Lincoln).  It is this fact that makes me an admirer of Lincoln and all things Lincoln. So much so that the one birthday I was in Washington DC I actually went to  Ford’s Theatre, watched a pretty dismal performance of a Lincoln impersonater and saw the room in which he breathed his last at the Peterson House across the street. Like all myths, this became a sad reality and in hindsight, I would have much rather left it in the realms of my imagination rather than have the myth exposed.

But like all humans, I don’t seem to learn from my follies and thought that I should see “Lincoln” the new movie now playing at PVR Cinema on the 12th. However, I believe that no movie is worth more than a hundred bucks and the only day I could catch this show on was today, I decided to go today with Anna Shetty in tow.

Well, I must say I was terribly, terribly disappointed by this movie which should have been named “The Thirteenth Amendment” rather than the misleading “Lincoln”  The film produced by Steven Spielberg had a brilliant portrayal of Lincoln by Daniel Day Lewis and  Sally Field as a neurotic Mary Todd but overall I was shocked at the horse trading and blatant purchase of votes that went behind this Constitutional Amendment. I always imagined the American Democracy to be above and beyond such crass practices that I thought abounded only in banana republics. Obviously I was wrong.

Had I known that the movie centred around a four month period of his presidency, I wouldn’t even have spent the three hours and Rs.100 watching a film that was at times boring and confusing to a person with a faint acquaintance with American history.

Thank God for the Madagascar Gelato we had at the end!