Haunting in the historical biopic: Lincoln

Abstract

Lincoln features several key moments in which the conventional, realist coordinates of the historical biopic open to a deeper sense of time and place, evoked in the film's references to clairvoyance, haunting, and ‘bad dreams’ – aspects of Lincoln's interior life that are well known but seldom expressed in film. The theme of haunting in Lincoln is rendered directly, but it is also suggested in the film's multiple references to the medium of photography, and in scenes that recall the flicker effect of early film. The film's complex understanding of time underlines the uncanny nature of the historical biopic, and the strange, almost phantasmatic wish at its core – the wish to impersonate and revivify the dead – a wish that is especially visible in films that take Abraham Lincoln as their subject.

Keywords::

• Lincoln
• historical biopic
• the Abraham Lincoln family
• the uncanny
• haunting
• phantasmagoria
• photography
• séance

Notes

Some of the material in this essay will appear in ‘Violence and Memory in Spielberg's Lincoln,’ by Robert Burgoyne and John Trafton, in the Blackwell Companion to the Films of Steven Spielberg (forthcoming).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Burgoyne

Robert Burgoyne is Chair in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. His work centers on historical representation and film, with a particular emphasis on questions of memory and emotion in film. Currently, he is working on the representation of war in film and photography. His recent book publications include The Hollywood Historical Film (Wiley Blackwell, 2008); Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History: Revised Edition (Minnesota, 2010); and The Epic Film in World Culture (Routledge, 2011).

John Trafton

John Trafton is a Film Studies academic and writer with a Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews. The primary focus of his work is on how cinema reimagines history and current events. His forthcoming monograph, The New American War Film, explores how contemporary American war films are constructed in relation to previous war film cycles. He has also published in Bright Lights Cinema Journal, The Journal of War and Cultural Studies, Frames Cinema Journal, and the Journal of American Studies in Turkey. Originally from Southern California, John also holds a M.Sc. in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh and a B.A. in Film Studies from Chapman University.