Review: The Better Angels

"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother," Abraham Lincoln famously said of his beloved mother Nancy, who died of milk sickness when he was nine years old. The Better Angels, written and directed by A.J. Edwards, is an evocation, a remembrance of times past, when Lincoln was an ordinary boy in Indiana.

Edwards has served as editor for director Terrence Malick, and it's abundantly clear that he shares and idolises Malick's dreamy aesthetic and poetic sensibility. The Better Angels could be mistaken quite easily for a Malick work with its impressionistic narrative conveyed in lyrical wide-angle, deep-focus cinematography that also attempts to make palpable the swaying grasslands and the streams of sunlight that rain through thick forest canopies. Edwards is less concerned with the factual and more with lyrical realism and, as such, details are sparingly parsed.

Lincoln's father Tom (Jason Clarke) is a commanding presence, a man of the land, a figure who shuns drink, gambling and vituperatives during a quarrelsome time that warrants such activities. He's suspicious of young Abe's (Braydon Denney) aberrant intellectual curiosity, and sets him to working the land, chopping wood, and hunting in the forest. Nancy (Brit Marling), an uneducated woman who could neither read nor write, is the tender and loving queen of Abe's heart. She believes in nurturing her boy's curiosity and tries in vain to convince her husband to send Abe to school. "He has a gift," she pleads. "We can't turn our back on what God has given us."

Nancy is not long for this world and her death leaves Abe and his older sister Sarah (McKenzie Blankenship) adrift. Tom sets off for Kentucky - the siblings, along with their cousin Dennis (Cameron Williams), whose fitful narration bears witness to these early years, are left to fend for themselves - and returns some time later with his new wife Sarah (Diane Kruger) and her children. Though her own son finds Abe aloof and strange ("He thinks he's better than us."), Sarah forges a kinship with her stepson, pledging to love him as much as his mother did. "If you choose to love me less, I'll still love you the same," she tells the boy.

The Better Angels, for all its indelible monochromatic imagery courtesy of cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd, can make for frustrating viewing, often lulling into catatonia. One needs to be in and maintain a certain mindset to experience this film and, even if one surfs the wavelength on which this film operates, one's endurance will be tested. There is an artificiality that bleeds into the proceedings which, unlike Malick, Edwards is unable to fully overcome.

Still, the effort is admirable and should be commended and encouraged. At its best moments, The Better Angels invites viewers into the cathedral of nature, surrounding them with a symphony of rustling leaves, whistling birds, and rippling rivers, and encouraging a certain reflective inspection. Yes, Lincoln made quite a man of himself, but what an amazing, almost miraculous achievement to come from such poor and humble beginnings and realise greatness and immortality.

The Better Angels

Directed by: A.J. Edwards

Written by: A.J. Edwards

Starring: Jason Clarke, Diane Kruger, Brit Marling, Braydon Denney, Wes Bentley, Cameron Williams, McKenzie Blankenship