In The Better Angels, a worthy idea for a film—depicting the hardships of future president Abraham Lincoln's log-cabin coming-of-age in rural Indiana in the early 19th century—is squandered amidst thinly developed ideas and overbearing directorial impersonation. Understand, writer and director A. J. Edwards is a disciple of art-house veteran Terrence Malick. He served as an artistic consultant on The Tree of Life and co-edited To the Wonder. In his directorial debut, Edwards does nothing to establish his own style or voice. Instead, he simply copies, replicates, and otherwise lifts from his master without mercy. It is at once sad and a bit amusing. Noticing the overt stylistic gestures—the ant's-eye-view of trees reaching for the heavens, the montages of people twirling in fields, the blend of solemn voice-over and thunderous orchestral music—becomes far more engaging than contemplating Abraham Lincoln and his presumably formative childhood experiences.

Compounding the problem is Edwards' curious disinterest in Lincoln as a human being with a personality, a sense of humor, or any distinctive characteristics, even ones still coalescing as he grows from a child to a teenager. Perhaps it is fear, a belief his film must hop from detached ellipsis to detached ellipsis lest austere credibility be sacrificed. But spare me. Neither the character's first name nor his surname are ever mentioned. (So cute! So coy!) Others mention how special and wise he is, how advanced he is for his age, yet he says perhaps ten words in the film and is often shown staring into the distance absentmindedly. As a Portrait of the President as a Young Man, The Better Angels' noncommittal and pretentious abstraction is frustrating. The closest the film comes to a center, to a heart, is an early maternal transition: Abraham's birth mother (Brit Marling) abruptly dies, and his taciturn father (a grunting Jason Clarke) rides to town for a while and returns with a second wife (Diane Kruger). Any intriguing domestic tension is undermined, however, because neither woman is a well-drawn character. The talented actresses are simply utilized as ornamental sprites. When they are twirling in the aforementioned fields, they could also be the same person. On the whole, this is a film with nothing of substance to say and no new visual ideas to obscure its intellectual and thematic deficiencies.

D