[four-star-rating]Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard, Mariah Carey, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lenny Kravitz, Robin Williams, James Marsden, Liev Schreiber, John Cusack, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Redgrave[/four-star-rating]
How quickly things change; how slowly things change.
An all-star cast finds a vehicle to show the great civil rights moments of the last 70 years. It’s a story, loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen, a White House butler through seven Presidents.
Cecil Gaines (Whitaker – the fictional Allen) is a black man born on a Virginia cotton farm. His parents are tenant farmers whose conditions are not much better than the slaves 60 years before them. Gaines flees the plantation to work as a butler in fancy hotels. After moving to DC, Gaines is hired to the White House and work under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. The whole time, Cecil fights to maintain his political neutrality on issues that deeply affected him, his family and his community.
The question the film asks is one of how we advance the groups we belong to – whether we are black, Hispanic, female, gay or any other minority. Do we fight from the outside and demand change? Do we surreptitiously work from the inside? Do we celebrate our uniqueness, or do we try to assimilate into a culture that has previously suppressed us?
Lee Daniels, whose first film Precious garnered praise and nominations, directed The Butler. I don’t quite agree with his decision to put his name in the title – Spielberg and Scorsese don’t do that. It robs the film from Whitaker and Winfrey, who are the rightful stars here.Whitaker and his wife Winfrey are phenomenal. No one in the supporting cast is a slouch – Gooding Jr. and Kravitz are fellow butlers. Most of the other cameos are portraying Presidents or other famous people. Part of the joy of The Butler is to see where we’ll find Robin Williams, James Marsden, Liev Schreiber, John Cusack, Alan Rickman, and – in one of the most hilarious turns in the movie – Jane Fonda.
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However, Daniels does a credible job varying the looks of the decades. The age makeup is exceptional, and the pace is solid.
There are but two other quibbles, and they’re major. So much is added to Allen’s life that this becomes almost a ridiculously speculative fiction. Also, The Butler sprawls over seven decades; to cover so much ground, Daniels is forced to overuse cliché techniques in narration, editing and montages. Very important plot points – historical events, marriages, births, and deaths – occur off-screen. These necessary tricks tend to let the emotional steam out of the film, disengaging us, making the overall effect weaker. As good as The Butler is, I have no doubt it would’ve worked better as a miniseries, giving each moment the weight it deserved.
In total, watching Whitaker find his place in the world and then slowly grow to a new man in a new age is worth the trip.
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