Lincoln (2012)

This is the best 2012 movie that I have seen (in the interest of full disclosure, I have only watched 3 of those nominated, but amongst those three was Argo--so once again I disagree with the powers that decide these things).

The movie deals with a very short period of time in Lincoln's life (it should really be called 'Lincoln 1865' because that is about all it covers).  Lincoln has been re-elected and he felt like it was the time to deal the death blow to slavery once and for all.  He was war weary.  So was the South.  So was the country.  It was a war that left no family untouched.  Lincoln toured battlefields full of dead soldiers and he met with the wounded in hospitals.  He was not shielding himself from the widespread misery that his decision to go to war had caused.  But there was a lot of opposition to an Amendment to the Constitution banning slavery.  Some thought that the Emancipation Proclamation would be enough.  Others openly feared giving former slaves full citizenship and the right to vote. 

The business of politics is a messy one, and passing the 13th Amendment was no exception.  Lincoln openly buys votes with patronage jobs for those leaving Congress.  He personally lobbies Congressmen for their votes.  He works on having Thaddeus Stevens, an acerbic and outspoken abolitionist who led the Radical Republicans, to tone down his rhetoric in order not to scare votes off (Stevens was widely thought to be sexually involved with his mixed race widowed housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith--and he did formally adopt two nephews of her deceased husband who were orphaned, so the personal ties with African Americans were very real for him).  Tommy Lee Jones as Stevens is fantastic, but Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln is truly astounding--he really makes you want to go back in time and have dinner with the President.