Stars: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo, Terrence Howard, Robin Williams, James Marsden, Liev Schreiber, John Cusack, Alan Rickman
Director: Lee Daniels
Oscar History: Oprah Winfrey not receiving an Oscar nomination will remain one of the truly great mysteries of the 2013 Oscar season. With her out, the film missed in all categories.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
However, when that comes at the beginning of a Lee Daniels film, the slogan means something entirely different, as The Butler, though occasionally entertaining and indulgent, is hardly something grounded in fact. The Butler is instead a crib session in presidential stereotypes and the stunning ground that we took as a nation from 1957-74 with the Civil Rights movement.
The film tells the tale of Cecil Gaines (Whitaker), the son of a cotton worker who watches his father shot to death by his arrogant, racist employer (Alex Pettyfer), after Pettyfer's character rapes Cecil's mother (Mariah Carey). The film then watches as Gaines is trained as a house servant, eventually making his way to a Washington hotel, and by a chance of circumstance, he becomes a butler in the White House during the final days of the Eisenhower administration.
The turmoil that greets each of the presidential administrations in regard to keystones in the Civil Rights movements (from the Little Rock Nine to the Voting Rights Act to the Black Panthers all the way to apartheid in South Africa) serve as a framing device to what is going on with Gaines, his wife (Winfrey) and his rebellious son Louis (Oyelowo). As the decade progresses, Cecil makes changes in his own way, eventually standing up for himself in the 1980's and demanding a raise to the same salary of his white counterparts, while Louis is somehow on the front-line of every single major civil rights movement of the eras. Meanwhile, Cecil's wife has an affair and spends the time wrestling with alcoholism and suffering through her husband's constant devotion to his job.
The film concludes with, of course, a callback to the 2008 presidential elections, when we see the first African-American man elected president. We see Cecil, walking through the White House, able to meet President Obama, a change he never thought could happen in a place he called his workplace for decade-upon-decade.
The problems with the film are pretty obvious, and the appeals of the film are as well. Lee Daniels is many things (a number of them good), but a subtle filmmaker he is not. The film spends a good chunk of the movie (at least the first third) spending a lot of its capitol trying to introduce guest star after guest star. Even if you've seen the previews, you still will be stunned by the amount of actors you recognize whom Daniels managed to land for smallish parts in the film. Blink and you'll miss, say, Jesse Williams as a handsome sit-in organizer (Williams is always handsome, so I'm aware that is redundant) or Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan without any regard for Mrs. Reagan's vocal inflections (she gets the right color for the suit, though). This is either excessive or great fun (though I was a bit saddened by the cut of Melissa Leo, and the slight heed paid to the first ladies in general-only Nancy and Minka Kelly's Jackie got an actress attached to them).
The film, though, is far too indulgent in other ways to be taken seriously. The film deals with a serious subject, and it does open up chapters of American history that sadly many people were not familiar with (I have spoken with many people who have discussed how they weren't aware of a lot of the hardships that occurred during this tumultuous time, and while I am glad people are learning, I'm a bit stunned that Americans haven't been paying attention, and what this lack of voter knowledge will have on the upcoming battle over the Voting Rights Act in Congress).
Daniels is too strong of a director to ever make the film boring (it's highly watchable), but it's not very good. The film is too quick to play fast-and-loose with LBJ's crassness or Dick Nixon's paranoia. It's like a meal made entirely of desserts-it's a bit satisfying, but ultimately unbalanced and not at all nutritious.
The best part of the movie, as has been noted by every reviewer, is Winfrey, who has returned to live film acting for the first time since 1998's Beloved. Winfrey received an Academy Award nomination for 1985's The Color Purple, but has rarely been seen on the big screen since, though clearly she hasn't lost her own actorly panache. Seeing Winfrey, boozing, sexed-up, and domineering, you have to hand it to her-she knows how to achieve presence. I couldn't tell, on occasion, if I was enthralled in the simple joy of seeing Winfrey inhabiting another person, or if I was instead marveling at the performance, but I have to give her incredible props-she creates something marvelous with this character, and none of the other principle people onscreen, including Whitaker (who is far too staid for my tastes and for the character's arch to work) comes close to this allure.
Overall, I'm putting this in the same class as The Paperboy, and while Lee Daniels Precious remains the only one of his films that I have latched onto wholeheartedly, I will continue to seek out his movies, if for no other reason than that he makes interesting pictures, and each one of them has achieved a sensational turn from an actress I admire. Any director who can make Mary Jones, Charlotte Bless, and Gloria Gaines come to life onscreen has my stamp of approval.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Did you like the film, or did you find it too traditional (or too out-there, because it somehow manages to be both)? Did you like that Daniels took liberties with a true story (something I'm always encouraging)? And are you as stunned (and delighted) as I am that a historical drama starring two African-American stars has become the must-see film of the late summer?
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