(CNN) - Critics are already gushing over Steven Spielberg's new "Lincoln" as a potential Oscar contender. Much of the praise centers on how the film makes the larger-than-life president at once heroic and human.
By all accounts, it deftly explores both his personal and political wisdom through scenes like the one in which Daniel Day Lewis, who plays Honest Abe, cites ancient mathematical theory in an assessment of humanity: "It's a self-evident truth that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other."