The Better Angels was released to DVD on March 3.
Our 16th President has been having a bit of an identity crisis in popular culture. Hunting vampires, killing zombies, and lending his image to shill Geico car insurance and Diet Mountain Dew. As advertisers and hack writers and filmmakers cheapen his legacy, historians fare only moderately better, carrying on academic conversations about his purported bedroom frivolities.
Reason prevailed as Steven Spielberg responded with a more historical and traditional perspective with 2012’s Lincoln. Now director A.J. Edwards and producer Terrence Malick swing the pendulum to the opposite side with The Better Angels, a far more “serious”, meditative and often beautiful living portrait of the president as a youth.
The familiar story of a boy who grew up in a rural log cabin is breathed new, rugged life. Presented in stunning black and white cinematography with a fluid camera eye, the film shows rather than tells us a story of the maternal bonds which shaped Abe’s childhood, first from his birth mother who died while he was still young, and then from his step-mother who showed unfailing, unconditional love for her new family. Dialogue is somewhat sparse, and comes primarily from the narration of Dennis, Abe’s older cousin.
As the last paragraph suggests, Abe’s family is a hodge-podge of people. Dennis has lived with his family from childhood. After Abe’s mother’s death, his father marries a widow who has children of her own. The resulting hybridized household is a reminder of a harsher time when people died young.
When “TERRENCE MALICK presents” is proudly displayed on the DVD cover and posters, comparisons to the famed director’s works are inevitable. This is especially true given that DP Matthew J. Lloyd’s expressive cinematography is reminiscent of — and likely inspired by — that of Malick’s latter-day collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki.
I’m going to risk whatever Austin cred I may have by first clarifying that I hold no particular esteem for latter-day Malick: a style marked by narrative incoherence, indecisive excess, and artsy meditativeness that borders on self-parody. I applaud his films’ remarkable visual splendor, but would more readily attribute that beauty to the work of brilliant cinematographers.
With The Better Angels, produced by Malick and bearing a similar visual signature, I don’t find these same faults. With its sparse production and monochromatic presentation, it doesn’t exude hubris or excess — just a simple and wonderful art film with a clear, if understated, narrative.
Ultimately, the success of the narrative is actually quite a fragile thing, hanging by one tiny little thread. The fact is that most viewers will already know before seeing the film that it is about a young Abraham Lincoln. Any cursory investigation into its marketing, synopsis, or critical response will quickly render this fact. This is important because that one essential bit of knowledge colors the entire viewing experience. We know who this boy will become. We know his reputation for honesty. His leadership in a time of Civil War. His role in the abolition of American slavery. These ideas dance in our minds as we watch a young boy deal with tragedy and try to find his footing in the world. His humble beginning has meaning precisely because of where he’s going.
However, the film itself never actually comes right out and identifies its main character. It opens with a quote by Lincoln and a couple shots of columns and steps — it’s the Lincoln Memorial of course, but shot in a way that’s hardly distinguishable from any large government building with Greco-Roman architecture. The point is, it’s entirely plausible that someone could watch this film without realizing who it’s about and why his story is important. I pity anyone who goes in blind and doesn’t catch on to the opening clues, because that viewing experience sounds like a painful slog where the slow pace and naturalistic quietude, stripped of its critical context, would seem a terrible bore.
Thankfully this was not at all my experience, and I felt satisfied by this foundational exploration of one of our nation’s greatest leaders.
The Package
The Better Angels arrived on DVD on March 3, and is also available on VOD.
I’m aware of my tendency to fault DVDs for not being Blu-rays, but I stand by these criticisms when applicable. The Better Angels is one such case. Distributors obviously base their release decisions by weighing projected costs against sales, but I can’t fathom how a film like The Better Angels, with its sophisticated target viewership and visual grandeur, could skip Blu-ray. This is even truer given that the film is presented in black and white. In the absence of color, texture becomes a film’s primary visual articulation. The Better Angels has deep rural setting with an abundance of rich, leafy foliage and tall grass, but this kind of detail is smoothed out at 360 lines of resolution (480 less the matted black bars).
The disc is technically fine as DVDs go, including English and Spanish subs and looking and sounding about as good as can be expected for the format.
The package’s key highlight is its booklet, which packs much more relevant content than its 8 pages might suggest. It contains a timeline of Lincoln’s life and written statements from key film crew members — the director, DP, production designer, and costume designer, as well as Smithsonian historian Brent Glass.
As if to troll me, the DVD booklet is G2-sized (meaning it’s a short booklet fitted for a Blu-ray case).
The Better Angels is rated PG.
Special Features and Extras
Promotional Trailers (5:05)
Promotional pre-menu trailers for Amplify Films releases God Help The Girl, Little Accidents, and Kumiko The Treasure Hunter. These ads play automatically on the disc’s startup and are not accessible from the menu.
Given the DVD’s lack of features and the absence of a proper Blu-ray release, this is a rare instance in which I’d recommend catching a film on VOD, where it’s available in high definition, over physical media.
A/V Out.
