‘Gore Vidal’s Lincoln’ Puts History on the Irresistible List

The good things about “Gore Vidal’s Lincoln” begin with the title.

Although it does seem to equate author and theme, it more importantly immediately conveys the subjectivity of this two-part NBC drama (9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on Channels 4, 36 and 39).

Unlike TV’s usual historical fiction, the cards are on the table here. This is obviously not the definitive history of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, meant to be inscribed in stone, but merely an unmuffled account by one of America’s foremost novelists, a version of Vidal’s best-selling “Lincoln,” adapted for TV.

It is also superb--four hours you can’t stop watching, history book facts resonated by a writer’s imagination in a scintillating, season’s-best production--with admirable performances by Sam Waterston as Lincoln and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln that will bear remembering at Emmy time.

If ever an actor fit a character, it is Waterston here, raising to twangy brilliance a complex, troubled, flawed, but ultimately triumphant figure in American history. Beneath his easy backwoods manner is a steely core and a streak of dark, sardonic wit that parallels the era’s grimness and the tragedies of his private life.

Mary Todd Lincoln may represent Moore’s finest dramatic work, a feisty, independent woman who deeply loves her husband even as she burdens and embarrasses him with her increasingly erratic behavior that hints at madness.

Ernest Kinoy’s fine script begins with Lincoln’s secret arrival in politically turbulent Washington 10 days before his inauguration on March 4, 1861, and ends with his assassination four years later. In between, familiar Civil War footnotes punctuate a deeply moving and political behind-the-scenes story that strips much of the marbled myth from Honest Abe the rail splitter.

You wish only that NBC had included a brief afterword like that in Gore’s book, where the novelist revealed the few myths that he created in order to advance his story: “How much of ‘Lincoln’ is generally thought to be true? How much made up?”

The same questions apply to NBC’s “Lincoln,” whose subject is not the uncompromising idealist and do-gooding egalitarian of popular legend, but an ambitious leader whose enlightened decisions derive from shrewd pragmatism as much as deep humanity.

“Lincoln” at once celebrates the giant and trims him by a few inches. He emerges as a man who somehow leads the Union through treacherous years despite being beset by political and personal problems that leave him tormented and remorseful, yet still heroic.

Determined to preserve the Union and avoid war, Lincoln tries to assure the South that he would not end slavery in states where it already exists. “We will not abolish slavery,” he promises a delegation of Virginians wishing their state to secede. “Abolition is beyond my power. And my desire!”

War comes, however, when South Carolina forces fire on Ft. Sumter. Later, Lincoln is attacked not only for battling the South, but also by Abolitionists for not pressing even harder to end slavery. A man of his time, he admits privately that he considers blacks inferior to whites, and he fails to understand a black leader’s rejection of his plan to establish an independent nation in Central America for freed slaves.

This Lincoln is easily underestimated, a sly, subtle man in obvious clothes, one with a homespun story for every occasion (“This reminds me of an old farmer. . . .”). You can imagine how his folksiness must have grated on his urbane foe and nemesis Gen. George B. McClellan, whose conservative leadership of the Union Army and indifference to orders from the White House drove Lincoln to despair.

Lincoln could not immediately fire the popular McClellan for political reasons, and the general made him suffer. There is one splendidly ironic scene here where McClellan arrives late for a meeting with Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward (Richard Mulligan) in his home, then goes immediately to bed without even greeting them. In another scene, Lincoln’s eyes fill with contempt as he prods and cajoles McClellan to take the field against Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Lamont Johnson directs beautifully. Many of his interior scenes have the dim, grainy, brownish look of old tintype photographs, and his battle sequences are as effective and commanding as anything to be found on the small screen.

Lincoln has his own battles to fight. Distracted by his wife and the deaths of their sons, frustrated by incompetent generals, haunted by casualties on both sides of the war, he ultimately seems to wither and fray, his shoulders slumping and his eyes deepening into small, dark hollows.

“Once this conflict is over, I end,” he says.

In “Gore Vidal’s Lincoln,” the past lives.