"Lee Daniels' The Butler" is a historical drama based on the true story of Eugene Allen, fictionalized here as Cecil Gaines, a black butler who served eight different presidents - from just prior to the Eisenhower administration through the Reagan years - during a period of time that included the civil rights era.
The picture works as a chronology of those events and as a history lesson that needs re-telling for students receiving too little of this history in schools. In addition, with Cecil's White House presence, we're given a glimpse of presidential political reactions to those events.
Filmmaker Lee Daniels ("Precious") can go too far in this latter case, as to actually suggest that Cecil and his butler partners may have influenced national policy. His greatest error, however, comes in creating Cecil as the character to lead the audience on this journey, only to undercut his effectiveness and that of his lead actor.
The opening begins with narration by Cecil informing of his childhood on a Georgia plantation, where in 1926 he sees his mother dragged away to be sexually assaulted and his father shot to death by the owner/perpetrator for inquiring about this violence.
The one note of kindness, from the family matriarch, is to bring Cecil inside from the cotton field to become a servant, though "servant" is not the term that she employs.
The lesson here for young Cecil is blunt and long-held: A white man can do what he wants and get away with it, so if you're being given a chance to serve and learn good manners, take pride in your work and endure what ignorance and slights come your way with perfect posture.
Cecil (played as an adult by Forest Whitaker) impressively moves from a swanky Washington, D.C., hotel to the White House (his lack of interest in politics wins him the job), which leaves him within earshot of many major presidential decisions in times of turmoil.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of turbulence in his own house.
In a film with a notable ensemble, perhaps no performance is better than that of Oprah Winfrey as Cecil's wife, Gloria. As a woman full of respect for her husband and love for their two sons, she is nonetheless an alcoholic who feels neglected by Cecil, who shares little of his experiences at the White House, and abandoned by her boys.
Winfrey is the picture of reserved frustration but also has a natural touch that brings some much-needed comic relief to the film, in which the script by Danny Strong (an Emmy-winner for HBO movies "Recount" and "Game Change") works to show Cecil's circle of family, friends and co-workers.
Daniels handles Cecil's interactions with presidents and first ladies in a manner that fits perfectly within the scope of the film's story. They complement the narrative with entertaining "behind-the-curtain" looks at presidents beyond the public image that we recall.
This is true even if it does result in cameo appearances for all, including Robin Williams (as Dwight D. Eisenhower), James Marsden and Minka Kelly (as John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline), and John Cusack (as a rumple-suited Richard M. Nixon).
Few resemble their famed characters, but Liev Schreiber (as Lyndon B. Johnson, barking orders from the toilet as his beagles join him) and Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda, as the Reagans, make the most of their limited screen time.
As for Oklahoma native Marsden, he isn't given much to do, but at least he does not embarrass himself in delivering JFK's accent.
The film captures the "downstairs" element exquisitely, as Daniels' team pulls off the look and feel of preparing for state dinners, from the exactness of silverware and seating arrangements to the atmosphere of expectations, as well as long friendships that can last decades, with Lenny Kravitz excellent and Cuba Gooding Jr. solid as fellow butlers serving beside Cecil.
Daniels keeps the history and action moving, for better or worse, with chronology stop signs of events. The bigger problem is how he and Strong's script have Cecil react to these stop signs, at which his oldest son, Louis (David Oleyowo of "Jack Reacher"), seems to always be present.
Louis leaves for college in the early 1960s, ready to change the world.
There's Louis sitting in the whites-only section at a lunch counter and refusing to leave before being arrested. There he is heading to the South to register voters. There he is on the Freedom Riders bus that's firebombed.
These coincidences become incredulous: There's Louis being hosed off the sidewalk in the Birmingham Campaign. There's Louis in Memphis talking to Martin Luther King shortly before he's shot. It goes on further.
This is over-the-top artistic license, especially considering the character of Louis is one of fiction. Furthering the disappointment is that Cecil's pride won't allow him to speak to his son for years because of Louis' activism - all of it nonviolent.
The message is one of "Louis, didn't I teach you to stay out of the way and not bother the white man?" and it makes Cecil seem feeble in a period of change and Whitaker's performance impotent.
For a more powerful and personal look at the slow march of time advancing over racial hatred, look for "The Color Purple." For a definitive framing of what racism looks like, view "Mississippi Burning." For a film that defines a moment in time, when color could not allow justice to be blind, there is "To Kill a Mockingbird."
"The Butler" is a welcome addition to this canon, but it's not a picture that we'll be regarding decades from now as one that changed the way that we think.
Michael Smith 918-581-8479
michael.smith@tulsaworld.com
'The Butler' vs. 'Lee Daniels' The Butler'
In a studio-versus-studio battle of wills, Warner Bros. protested that the Weinstein Company film "The Butler" was infringing on its title registration with the Motion Picture Association of America of a Warner Bros. 1916 short film titled "The Butler." The MPAA agreed, necessitating the Weinstein Company to rename its new film "Lee Daniels' The Butler," with the director's name added and printed on promotional materials at a size equal to at least 75 percent of the words "The Butler."
Original Print Headline: History In Color
'LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER'
Cast: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo, Lenny Kravitz, Cuba Gooding Jr.
Theaters: Cinemark Tulsa, AMC Southroads 20, Cinemark Broken Arrow, Starworld 20, RiverWalk, Owasso, Sand Springs
Running time: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Rated: PG-13 (some violence and disturbing images, language, sexual material, thematic elements and smoking)
Quality: (on a scale of zero to four stars)
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