Review: The Better Angels

City Paper grade: B-

Shot in a lush, buttery black and white energized by leaf-filtered natural light, A.J. Edwards' evocative account of Abraham Lincoln's early years is as gorgeous as it gets, doffing a cap to Terrence Malick with every wispy hover and whispered line. But frame-worthy photography only takes the first-time director halfway, leaving the innermost workings of an important American family in the lurch. A Malick acolyte who contributed to The New World, The Tree of Life and To The Wonder, Edwards is clearly a student of the aesthetic, his loyalty toeing the narrow rope between inspiration and outright aping. Following the Lincolns as they move from Kentucky to a log-cabin farmstead in Indiana, he doesn't give Braydon Denney much dialogue with which to chisel out the adolescent Abe, and Denney doesn't need it. Through measured observation and action, he establishes the boy who would be president as bookish, introspective and smarter than the grown folks surrounding him, including his gruff father (Jason Clarke), birth mother (Brit Marling) and stepmother (Diane Kruger), who'd he go on to credit as his biggest inspiration. With a run time of just over 90 minutes, the arty pace isn't a major drag (Malick serves as a producer here), but what Edwards chooses to execute in this tight window is. Despite the intimacy of the approach, we're separated from Abe's more abstract talents and yearnings, forced to settle for secondhand accounts of his potential from the adults around him. In this way, it comes off more as a visually stunning parent-teacher conference than a deep dig into the elements, both innate and environmental, that made Lincoln who he was.