Runtime: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Lee Daniels
Quick Impressions:
Why aren’t “true” stories ever true anymore? I wish there were a real man named Cecil Gaines who survived a traumatic childhood event to become a White House butler serving under Presidents Eisenhower-Reagan. I wish Cecil Gaines had two sons named Louis and Charlie, and that the latter fought in Vietnam while the former was a Freedom Rider who knew Martin Luther King personally. As I watched the movie, I thought such a thing (though undoubtedly convenient for constructing a narrative) might be possible. But it’s not actually true. I can’t deny that I’m disappointed.
Danny Strong’s screenplay is based on an article by Wil Haygood about a man named Eugene Allen who really did work in service at the White House (beginning with the Truman presidency, in fact). And Allen really did have a son named Charles who served in Vietnam. But Louis is completely made up.
Well, okay, that’s not a true statement either. Obviously somebody like Louis Gaines did exist. (Quite a lot of somebodies, I’m sure!) Somebody’s son was a Freedom Rider who went on to dedicate his life to the Civil Rights Movement. A number of sons (and daughters) did that. It’s just that none of them was the contentious elder son of a White House butler named Louis Gaines (or Eugene Allen).
The wife and her drinking problem seems harder to rule out completely. (I mean, a son who makes headlines as an activist and runs for Congress either does or does not exist, but who knows what kind of undocumented demons a rarely mentioned wife may face on her own time.) But that aspect of the screenplay seems to be largely rooted in Danny Strong’s imagination as well.
How I wish it were all true! That aside however, The Butler is still a pretty good movie. It’s definitely great as a conversation starter, and it would make an excellent introduction to the Civil Rights Movement for a young audience because of its compelling and accessible dramatization of key events and (more importantly) ways of thinking.
After seeing the previews, I was under the mistaken impression that the movie would be too syrupy and misty-eyed, but actually it’s not that kind of film at all. I was surprised and pleased to find that it’s actually fairly complex and definitely not afraid to shy away from violence, brutality, and other ugly realities of racism.
Also this movie should win some kind of award for the creative casting of past American presidents. Just when I thought, They’ll never find a more uncanny choice for a White House role than this, the movie upped its game and blew my mind yet again.
The Good:
Lee Daniels favorably impressed me with Precious. (And I just learned recently that he also directed The Paperboy. For some reason, I didn’t realize that. Now maybe I’ll see it. Up to this point, all I’d heard was that Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron, which is hardly a reason to watch a movie. Don’t get me wrong. If I have to see someone peeing, I suppose Nicole Kidman is one of the more palatable candidates, but I’d rather just save the money and watch movies that are less focused on peeing.) (But I don’t think the movie is really focused on peeing. I think it just got a lot of weird press.)
Anyway, I’m also interested in the suddenly exploding screenwriting career of Danny Strong (whom I remember fondly from his days as Jonathan on Buffy). I’m also fascinated by the Civil Rights Movement and by the way a person’s (or a society’s) worldview and understanding of history can change completely following a shift in perspective (and by the fact that when this kind of change happens, many of us fail to realize our views of reality and understanding of the past have changed).
Also I love the Oscars, and you can see from the previews that the Weinsteins are hoping Oprah will win an Academy Award.
So there was a lot to recommend this film to me, and for the most part, The Butler did not disappoint.
Amazingly, this movie is openly about history and Civil Rights, and yet it still manages to be less heavy handed than Elysium. The Butler does convey a staggering number of “lessons” and “morals,” but it dishes them out in an artful way and allows us to agree or disagree, to engage with the film in a way that works for us. The screenplay is pretty well written. (It is not completely true, and it is sometimes boring, but leaving that aside, it has a number of shining strengths.)
Not only is this movie often (genuinely) funny (there’s a lot to lighten the mood), but it also raises a number of emphatically clear questions without sacrificing artistry, ambiguity, or complexity. It really does make you think. It gives you some pretty compelling stuff to think about to get you started, but from there, you’re free to continue the discussion in any number of directions.
I very much liked the suggestion that there is more than one way to be a hero. We’re presented with such a paradox. Cecil and his family and friends are thrust into a world in which nobody (at least nobody of their race) can possibly win no matter what they do, and yet a number of people still manage to make progress, and they make that progress by following a number of different (and sometimes seemingly opposed) paths. For me, Cecil is easier to identify with than Louis, since I’ve always been a big proponent of, “Just don’t make trouble and do whatever they tell you, and then they won’t get you, and when you’ve finished, they’ll leave you alone, and you can do whatever you want.” This is not the most courageous way to live, mind you, but it keeps you from getting murdered (usually). Cecil’s behavior is clearly hugely influenced by the (unintentionally dramatic) object lesson his father gives him in the first scene. (I don’t know what my excuse is. Nothing like that ever happened to me.) The lesson of that first scene is crystal clear—do not make trouble.
Of course, even though Martin Luther King himself speaks up to defend Cecil’s way of living and to extol his contribution, the end of the movie leaves us with this gross, despondent feeling. Does Cecil’s way actually work? Has he really been living or just avoiding being murdered? What’s the point of it all? The movie’s really a bit subversive in that way. Cecil is being honored (by the fact that a film is being made about him) as a hero, and characters in the movie recognize him as a hero, but this recognition leads him to realize what a Pyrrhic victory it’s been. Having a “successful” life—by the standards of what the world allows him—has cost him his whole life. It’s hard not to wonder if the movie is secretly trying to show that Cecil is less a hero than his son. Perhaps he’s part of the problem without being aware of it. And yet, the movie tells us that he is heroic. Dr. King explains how he’s heroic, and the film shows us repeated examples of this. So what are we to take away? That sometimes doing one of many possibly right things does not feel right? That one person only makes a difference because of his influence on/interactions with others?
I like the movie because it raises difficult questions and then provides answers that seem to be in conflict with one another. It’s never too easy, never too simple.
I also love that the movie refutes the notion that I heard from many, many elderly people when I was a child—this zany idea that not everybody wanted to make trouble. Some people were perfectly happy to be treated like second class citizens. They were happy with the status quo. The life of Cecil and his colleagues shows clearly time and again that just because someone smiles at you and treats you cordially, this does not mean that the person is fully satisfied or happy about being subservient to you. Just because a doorman smiles at you as he opens the door, that does not mean that his favorite thing in the entire world is opening doors. He’s just doing his job. (Just like fast food workers or check out clerks in stores sometimes smile because they’re happy but more often smile because they’ve been told they’ll be fired if they don’t smile at the customers.)
This movie also does a great job of showing the ever rippling after effects of violence and hatred. Cecil is traumatized by a violent act early on and lives virtually his entire life trying to avoid incurring any similar violence ever again. Meanwhile, his son and his girlfriend gradually become more and more open to the idea of committing violent acts because they’ve been abused so frequently and so terribly by violent racist hate groups. If you’ve ever wondered, “Why would anybody join the Black Panthers?” or “Why would anybody passively allow others to treat them as if they were inferior?” this movie offers some compelling answers.
Probably the best thing The Butler does is point out how much has changed here in our own country just in one man’s lifetime. Sometimes people talk about Martin Luther King Jr. or Emmett Till as if they lived hundreds of years ago. But it hasn’t been that long, not at all.
The Performances:
This movie has a cast and a half, and probably the most suspenseful thing for me was waiting to see what unlikely actor would show up in the White House next. James Marsden seems like an obvious choice for Kennedy, but some of the others really astonished me. Who would ever imagine Eisenhower played by Robin Williams or Liev Schreiber as LBJ? When John Cusack showed up as Richard Nixon, I thought surely that was the height of zany casting! But Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan? And then—come on, seriously—Jane Fonda as Nancy? (I mean, we’re supposed to smirk, right?) Apparently, the casting director has a great sense of humor. (I mean, doesn’t that cast list sound more like a punchline? “…And Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.”)
Here’s the surprising thing, though. All of these actors end up being really good in their parts. I was amazed at how quickly I got used to Robin Williams’s Eisenhower. Rickman ended up being a surprisingly good fit for Reagan. (If they make a full length Reagan biopic starring Rickman, I’ll be really, really excited.) And as LBJ, Schreiber was much more convincing than I ever would have imagined. Seriously, Schreiber is really great.
(Jane Fonda’s good too, of course. As my mom pointed out, “She does look like Nancy Reagan.” Yes, she does. That makes me think, “If it looks like Nancy Reagan, and talks like Nancy Reagan—WATCH OUT! IT MIGHT BE JANE FONDA!!!!!” That amuses me for some reason.)
In general, this film contains some fabulous performances. I was particularly delighted to see Elijah Kelley as Cecil’s younger son Charlie. My stepson loved Hairspray when he was little, and at our house, we’ve always been particular fans of Elijah Kelley’s performance as Seaweed. Just the other day, my son picked out Hairspray to watch, and we all mused about why Elijah Kelley hasn’t had more big film roles. I’m still wondering. He’s so talented and charismatic. And as Charlie he has some wonderfully funny lines that he really makes the most of, yet he’s far more than comic relief. Kelley’s fantastic here and deserves more substantial film roles. I hope his career takes off soon.
I’ve also particularly liked David Oyelowo since he first got my attention in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and he’s very good, too, as Louis, Cecil’s elder son. To be honest, Louis has a more compelling part than Cecil. While Cecil carefully keeps his opinions to himself and his emotions in check, Louis emotes his way through a series of dramatic misadventures, and Oyelowo does a great job of both gaining our sympathy and holding our interest. I think he has a particularly nice moment on the bus, and he’s also good in the discordant dinner scene.
Early on (before the boys had grown up) I thought the most compelling performances (by far) came from Adriane Lenox and Terrence Howard as Gina and Howard, Cecil and Gloria’s friendly (sometimes too friendly) next door neighbors. The pair not only have a perfect rapport as a bickering couple, but they also bring such energy and focus to the screen as individuals. I’ve always thought that Howard is a marvelous actor, and I was really impressed by Lenox as well. It’s not that either of them has a particularly difficult part. It’s just that they both make it look so effortless. They disappear into their roles, and you believe them as the characters totally from the first second they’re on screen. (I wasn’t very familiar with Lenox before this, but I now see that she won a Tony for Doubt in the role Viola Davis played in the film. I wish I lived within easy reach of Broadway productions.)
It was also really nice to see Cuba Gooding Jr. in a major role in a serious film again. (He can be a great actor, but his body of work is wildly uneven.) I liked him as the impishly lewd Carter Wilson more than I’ve liked him in anything for a very long time.
I’m also discovering that I really enjoy Lenny Kravitz as an actor. For whatever reason, I was never that into his music. But he’s got good screen presence, and I’ve never not liked him in a movie role. Maybe I just haven’t heard enough of his music. (All I can call to mind is “American Woman,” so possibly much of the fault is on my end when it comes to not particularly loving his music.) I like Coleman Domingo, too. He’s not in it very much, but it’s nice to see him.
This movie has a lot of blink-and-you-miss-them appearances. You wouldn’t call them cameos exactly because the characters are significant. But it is odd to see big name talents showing up out of the blue only to disappear again less than five minutes later.
(For example, Melissa Leo is supposedly in this movie, but I don’t remember seeing her. And when the end credits rolled, my husband exclaimed in disbelief, “Mariah Carey!??!” I didn’t recognize her during the film either, but as soon as he screamed out her name, I realized, “She was his mother.” Just like in Lee Daniels’s earlier film Precious, Carey is dressed down quite a bit but perfectly recognizable if you’re told that she’s in the film and start trying to find her.)
Vanessa Redgrave is in the film for a few minutes early on, and so is Alex Pettyfer. Given all the rumors about how difficult he is to work with, I think his part is rather perfect. Clarence Williams, too, comes and goes. There are so many big names and famous faces that parade in and out again, it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Forest Whitaker gives the best performance in the film as Cecil (who, in terms of what he says and does is the most boring character in the story by far). Cecil would be easy to play wrong because he very rarely says or does anything exciting or even significant. (The most profound things he says are usually in the voice over narration.) What a life he has! But he spends most of it as a spectator. The movie really only works because so much is going on within Cecil at all times, and Whitaker is a high powered enough actor to show us Cecil’s interior life. Through his eyes, with his face, with subtle gestures, Whitaker shows us what’s going on within the character, and more than that, he makes us care. We’re experiencing the highs and lows of the story right along with Cecil, and I think that’s mostly to Whitaker’s credit.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Forest Whitaker:
I’ll be stunned if Whitaker gets a nomination. But it’s early in the year, and I haven’t seen most Oscar baity films yet, so I’ll just throw his name into the ring as a what-if. He has a very atypical moment when Louis comes home for dinner that would make a nice Oscar clip. Personally I love the resonant line he delivers when contemplating Mrs. Kennedy covered in her husband’s blood. I think that’s also a particularly strong moment for the screenplay.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment Oprah Winfrey:
It’s too early to know anything, but if there’s one nominee in this cast, it’s going to be Oprah. She doesn’t always have great luck with film roles, but this one seems written to get Oscar attention, and she gives it her all. Even though she has a lot of showy moments, I think she’s particularly charming in her final scene in the kitchen, though for an Oscar clip, the moment on the couch with Terence Howard might be better. I think she plays her sober moments better than her drunken ones, though she does remind me of Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter when she gazes into her make-up mirror on her dressing table. That’s a strong scene, too. What is it about make-up mirrors that makes women seem so sinister and unstable?
Best Scene Visually:
The scene on the bus really got my attention—mainly because I just remember thinking, Why would anyone do that? I don’t approve of “lazy” racism or “cowardly” racism, but at least I understand it to a degree. In The Help, for example, I can see why Charlotte caves and does the wrong thing. She’s weak, and society seems to be pressuring her to do the “correct” thing even though it’s morally wrong. But what motivates anyone to go out of his (or her) way to hunt other human beings down, terrorize them, degrade them, injure them, and attempt to set them on fire?
My husband pointed out, “They don’t see them as human beings.” (He wasn’t defending them, just pointing out their tendency to dehumanize “the enemy.”)
I replied, “Yes, but you wouldn’t set dogs on fire.”
He answered, “They might.”
Yes, they might—because they are a bunch of crazy murderers. But my question is why? Why?
I mean, I guess I can understand the perceived need to kill someone who gets in your way. But why go out of your way to torture someone to death? And then when you do, how can you be so self-congratulatory about it as if you’ve done a good thing? I just really, really do not understand. But the scene on the bus really got my attention.
Best Scene:
This may sound kooky, but my favorite scene was the final conversation between Cecil and Gloria. It just seemed so real, so human, so normal, so ordinary, so typical, so authentic, so charming and yet so believable. This exchange is so vital to the success of the movie because necessity has made Cecil so restrained, and for so much of the film he seems vaguely sad, a bit confused, quietly frustrated. From the Nixon years on, everything kind of goes downhill for him—except his relationship with Gloria. After seeing Cecil putting on a face for his employers and wearing that face for almost the entire movie, it’s uplifting (and a huge relief) to see his genuine face in an unguarded, loving exchange with his wife. He’s been a great butler all this time, but who cares about that? We want to see that he is also happy and reasonably fulfilled as a human being. I loved this scene.
Best Action Sequence:
The lunch counter sit-in (interspersed with preparation for it and the butler setting the table) is probably the strongest scene in the entire movie. It’s paradoxically the scene that I think would be most instructive for children to see and the scene I think is too harsh and intense for children.
The Negatives:
I get so annoyed when true stories aren’t true. I guess this one particularly bugs me because why couldn’t they find a way to dramatize the true story of Eugene Allen (the real life butler)? I don’t have a problem with historical fiction if it’s honest about what it is, but the style of this film makes us believe that it’s basically true. I mean I started researching a bit when I got home because you don’t expect every small detail to be true. But the film definitely gives the impression that its story is broadly true. And then you find out the man wasn’t even named Cecil Gaines. And the name change itself would be forgivable. You think, Well maybe his activist son didn’t approve of the film. And then you find out he didn’t even have an activist son. So that’s quite annoying.
When stories like this stray so far from the facts, it gives jerks the opportunity to say, “But it wasn’t really like that because this story is just made up to get people riled up!”
During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, some fathers were in domestic service, and some sons were Freedom Riders and activists. That is really true. The disconnect between personal and professional (the face you show each other and the face you show them) really did (and does) exist. The despicable violence in response to passive resistance really did (and though it shouldn’t sometimes still does) exist. So the movie is showing us a generational (and beyond that temperamental, situational) tension that did exist. There was probably a pretty pronounced generational divide in the thinking of some fathers and sons. It’s just that this tension as it played out on a personal level wasn’t really the most tormenting and central concern of Cecil Gaines’s life (and not just because he didn’t exist and he’s really Eugene Allen, but because Eugene Allen didn’t really have a son named Louis who hung out with Martin Luther King).
I understand why Louis is given such a central place. Basically by including him, Danny Strong is just putting a face on an entire generation/cross-section of society. It’s pretty impossible to believe that an African American man of Cecil’s age could work at the White House during those years and not feel a bit of tension or distress regarding the activism of a younger generation. Maybe none of those Freedom Riders was Cecil’s son, but any of them could have been his son. So I see what Strong is doing. But maybe it would have been more effective to tell two parallel true stories, one of Eugene Allen, and one of some real young man the right age to be his son, his symbolic son.
Of course, without the inclusion of a Louis-type character, the movie would be pretty boring. It might be better as a character drama, but it would be much less effective as a film about Civil Rights. Cecil Gaines is a quiet, unassuming character. He’s not exactly the most exciting guy in the room. Forest Whitaker is, however, a very gifted actor. He could probably make a story focused entirely on Cecil (with no Louis) work, but it would be a very different movie. Watching this, I did wish that Cecil’s part of the story were a bit more exciting, or maybe that it built to a more dramatic finish. Often the movie doesn’t feel like it’s actually headed anywhere in particular. Since it’s all made up anyway, I think it should have a more exciting trajectory.
The never ending parade of celebrity presidents was something that I actually liked. However, when it comes to high profile actors portraying unlikely presidents, not all men are created equal. Cusack as Nixon remains the hardest to believe. Don’t get me wrong. He actually gives a decent performance. It’s just that it’s so hard to forget he’s John Cusack—I mean, he looks just like John Cusack, no matter how much they artificially inflate his face!—and it’s so weird that John Cusack is playing Richard Nixon. It’s weirdly distracting.
Another thing that’s distracting is Oprah Winfrey as Cecil’s devoted but troubled wife Gloria. Now people slam Oprah’s acting skills all the time. But the problem here isn’t that she’s giving a bad performance. It’s just that she’s Oprah. After the movie, my husband said to me, “For the first two-thirds of the movie, I was so distracted by Oprah Winfrey. It isn’t that she was bad. It’s just that she’s an icon. When she’s sitting in the room, you don’t get lost in the story. You think, Oh look! There’s Oprah!” I had a very similar experience, although I will say about the time Gloria stopped drinking, I stopped fixating on the fact that she was Oprah. It is very distracting, though, but I don’t know what could have been done about it. Oprah can’t help being Oprah.
I was surprised to get home and find that this movie is rated PG-13 because I think it’s harsher content is disturbing enough to warrant an R. (If you can only say the F-word a max of three times—or whatever it is now—how come you can say the N-word one hundred million billion times while attacking people and attempting to set them on fire and still get a PG-13?) Of course, I’m that weird parent who lets her kids watch all kinds of shocking stuff. My stepson is ten and probably old enough to watch this if he expressed an interest, but if we did let him watch it, I’d feel like we were showing him an R-rated film. I mean, don’t subversive things usually get an R rating? This movie points out (explicitly) that although citizens of the United States routinely condemn other nations for their bad behavior, we often gloss over our own civil rights abuses. The narrator flat out says this, and the film over and over again demonstrates the truth of his statement. (It irritates me that they seem to have made up what happened to him as a boy. Why not show a real, documented case of something similar, so people can’t whine that it’s made up? I mean, Cecil Gaines may be partially fictional, but Emmett Till (referenced repeatedly in the movie) is 100 percent real.) All this talk about being on the wrong side of history—I think the MPAA should have given this an R. I’m sure by their odd standards, reality itself is R-rated. But I guess the rating doesn’t really matter since I always ignore them anyway. I guess it’s good that the movie is rated PG-13 because it could be a good teaching tool.
Overall:
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (which has to be called that to avoid copyright infringement, like Disney’s The Kid) is well-written, superbly acted by an enormous cast of famous faces, and thought-provoking enough to generate productive conversations for days to come. It also gives us bright moments of genuine humor and a number of quirky presidential cameos, without sacrificing a realistic portrayal of the ugly, hateful violence that the passive resistance of the Civil Rights Movement sometimes incurred. It’s the kind of movie that makes me excited that Oscar season is drawing closer and closer every day.