A Conversation on Lincoln’s Childhood with the Cast of ‘The Better Angels’

A Lawrence Dreyfuss

“The mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” These words concluded Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in March of 1861.  Finding courage to the stand by the conviction that the United States had within itself the forgiveness and strength to reunify as a nation is what Lincoln was advocating for. The fortitude, which this must have required is unknowable but the ethos, which that provided paved the way for a historic presidency.  Historians grapple with understanding that courage.  It is the subject of “The Better Angels” a new film from first time director and Terrance Mallick protégé, AJ Edwards.

The film focuses on Lincoln’s prepubescent youth in rural Indiana and is based on various accounts and writings concerning this section of his life.  It is a story of resiliency and family.  The cast includes Jason Clark (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) as Abraham’s father, Brit Marling (“I, Origins”) as his stepmother and Wes Bentley (“Hunger Games”) as his childhood teacher.  Entertainment Voice sat down with Clark, Marling, Bentley and Edwards to delve into the life of the historical figure.

Entertainment Voice: The film has a quiet but powerful tone.  How did you come to the look and feel of the final product?

AJ Edwards: Citing Ansel Adams and Sally Mann was important in creating the aesthetic of the film. The monochromatic palette was the way the picture was conceived for the sake of austerity and helped with production design in creating a greater sense of reality.  It also was able to show the cast in a way they had never been seen before, in a different very cinematic way.
Wes Bentley: I’m focusing on the character, on the moment.  The style of film making with Edwards and nature – I spent more time focusing on that.
Jason Clark: One thing I enjoyed from the start of the piece is a concept of time.  Allowing things to be out there in the wilderness, in terms of the pace of things, your child, your wife, doing your work – it’s part of that world.  You let things seek in. You listen to the bible, the thoughts in your head. I love the sense of space.  It’s there in the film, there is so much there in the world, in the frontier. In the 90 minutes of the film you allow things to absorb into you, to evolve and move through you.
AJ Edwards: The screenplay was a blueprint on which we wanted to build something greater.  We would always start there and then based on the circumstances and dealing with the children, we discovered new elements to bring to screen, nuisances which were more fascinating than what had been preconceived in the writing.

EV: What sparked this interest in telling a story that so few people know about Lincoln?

AJ Edwards: It’s an unfamiliar one, a mysterious story. Lincoln spoke very little of it because of the grief it cost him, but there was also joy in those Indiana years. It’s a story in the Lincoln biography that also can exist autonomously, you could remove the word Lincoln from it and the characters, setting and drama that occurred doesn’t require his great stature to make it compelling.

EV: How much did you feel attached to creating something historically accurate?

AJ Edwards: It was a case by case basis.  There are different amounts of information on each topic.
Brit Marling: It felt like Edwards was exploring being a metaphysical detective.  You come into a time period and space, which there isn’t that much fact about. But, you recreate the log cabin and the costumes and then a group of people come together and play detective of mood and tone, and feeling to flush who those people were. Knowing that my character was deeply religious but she was also illiterate meant that it was important to come at her from a perspective of listening to the text rather than reading it. Seeing what the parables would have meant to her at that time. Things like that help you to flush it out without having to nail down every fact.
AJ Edwards: These people the film talks about were not being written about or having their portraits painted. They were mainly illiterate backwoods people. When people started to chronicle Lincoln’s story after his death, they realized they better start getting these interviews.  Two women went out and found these people on porches smoking a pipe and that’s the main source for how we know about them. To think that it was just caught at the last moment, we almost lost these stories.
Jason Clark: It’s not some idealized world of happy farmers. It’s hard to imagine unless you really see it.  To really go there with nothing and see what it means to go to the frontier and put down roots, that’s a whole other thing.

EV: Much of the film is shot from a child’s perspective. What led you to take that approach?

AJ Edwards: Up angles ennoble characters as though they were a statue or a hero. Our goal was to ennoble everyone in the story, give them a Lincolnesque stature.  We see more of Lincoln’s characteristics in those around the boy then in the boy himself.

EV: The musical selections in the film are all period orchestral music. That, along with your sound design really brings the space to life. What were your considerations for that?

AJ Edwards: The music is very important to me. It’s what I like to work on the most in post-production. It can be such a stimulant that it causes things to grow and improve. The most important theme is the picture is a piece by 19th century Russian composer Kalinnikov. It’s not of the time and world of Lincoln, but it suggests the story so well in this rocking ostinato theme it creates a sense of something being weighed and considered. It goes away and returns in order to connect various aspects of Lincoln’s childhood.

EV: How far does everyone go in immersing themselves in that period?

Jason Clark: We didn’t really have a choice.  I was just wearing the wardrobe that was it. We got wet. The food was just root vegetables in water.
Brit Marling: But it was good.
Jason Clark: Yeah.  We found a chicken at one point. We kept it very simple.  I had boots but everyone else was barefoot.
Brit Marling: I asked the costume designer for a pair of boots but she said “No, Nancy [Lincoln] would have been barefoot.” It was great because the experience informs the film. You are outside all day in the cold, you don’t know what that’s like until you live that way for awhile. Then you realize, no wonder this man was so strong and had resolve. He hacked a life out of the wilderness, which wasn’t pleasant.

EV: At the end of the day, what did you each learn about Lincoln?

Jason Clark: You remember things that are put inside you as you a child but you forget they are there. Everything you become comes out of your relationships with each other and with the land.
Brit Marling: His mother dies, his father disappears and these kids survived the winter.  If you’re a child and not only survive but thrive in that, you can understand how he became someone capable of standing alone and holding an unpopular opinion, and have the strength and resilience behind that.
AJ Edwards: The commitment of education at that time. It was all private so the ability to send your kid off for that was tough.  Also, how circumstances drove his faith. They were Primitive Baptists. It was not uncommon to lose your siblings. This notion that if you lived to be 18 it was not uncommon to think you are bound for something. I think that’s very humbling. The sense of destiny and the force greater than yourself hurdling you toward something whether you are ready or not.

The Better Angels will be released Nov. 7.