Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s Lincoln is about Obama, we are told, or don’t need to be told. It is about the triumph of a political compromiser, and it argues that radical change comes about by triangulation, by back-room deals, and by a willingness to forego ideological purity. Kushner has said this quite explicitly, not only likening his Lincoln to Obama, but arguing that there are general principles to be drawn from it; “too much impatience can make it impossible for anything to happen,” he said, in response to Chris Hayes’ question about whether the movie favors moderates over radicals. It is, in short, a barely veiled argument that radicals should get in line, be patient, be realistic.

It does this in several ways. First and foremost, it uses a realist aesthetic to make it seem like a compromising cynicism is realistic. Form becomes content: it shows us the world as it “really” is by adding in the grit and grain and grime that demonstrate that the image has not being airbrushed, cleaned up, or glossed over, and this artificial lack of artifice signifies as reality. This is why people who know nothing about Baltimore or the drug trade are quick and confident in praising the “realism” of a show like The Wire. They don’t mean “accuracy,” because that’s not something most people could judge; they mean un-glamorized, un-romanticized, dark. Spielberg’s Lincoln accomplishes the same trick, making its claim to “realism” seem plausible by showing us a Washington, DC that is dirty, small, dark, cold, unpleasant, and corrupt. Our field of view is claustrophobic and drab; we are shown a political arena without sentiment or nostalgic glow. That’s how we know we’re seeing the “real” thing.

But, of course, we’re not. We’re just seeing a movie whose claim to objective accuracy is no less artificial than the filters by which an Instagram takes on the nostalgic glow of a past that was never as overexposed and warm as it has become in retrospect. And when we take “gritty” for “realism,” another kind of “realism” gets quietly implied and imposed: the capitalist realism by which ideals become impossible and the only way things can get done is through compromise and strategic surrender. Anti-romanticism is all the more ideological because it pretends to have no ideology, to be the “plain truth” that demonstrates the falsity of romantic visions. And this movie is anti-romantic because, to be blunt, it is anti-revolutionary. In this movie, “things happen” through patience and compromise, not through steadfast idealistic struggle.