The way I see it, if Lincoln isn’t the best movie ever made, it’s going to be a failure. Think about it: which President is more epic, more cinematic, more pronouncedly representative of American history than Abraham “Big 16” Lincoln?
Luckily, it seems all the right people are moving forward to bring the lumbering politican to the big screen. The biopic will see Steven Spielberg, one of the country’s most celebrated living directors, collaborating with the superhuman Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln. And the hype keeps growing along with the everpresent good news surrounding this film. Jared Harris, a phenomenon of supporting performance, will take on the formidable role in Lincoln of Ulysses S. Grant.
Harris is one of those actors who is so good that he’ll never be famous. That is to say, you can see a movie with a monumental performance by the actor and never know he was in the movie. That’s because there’s nothing “Jared Harrisy” about a Jared Harris performance. He plays all types. He and the role are one and the same. So, unfortunately, you’ll never catch glimpse of him entering a scene and say, “Oh, I love this guy!” Even though you most certainly do. You just didn’t know that all those roles you loved so much were the same guy. To fathom it seems a bit impossible, actually.
But Harris will indeed do wonders with Ulysses S. Grant; that’s something of which we can be sure. And we can also invest some confidence in the performances of Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Jackie Earl Haley, David Oyelowo and James Spader.
So I guess this just might be the best film ever made after all. Good. We can rest easy, then…for now.
Harris can also be seen as the vicious Prof. Moriarty in the upcoming film, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, starring Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law.
Source: Indiewire
