Lee Daniels' The Butler (FILM REVIEW)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Forest Whitaker Delivers Oscar-Quality Performance in Emotionally-Searing
Civil Rights Saga
Eugene
Allen (1919-2010) served eight presidents over the course of an enduring career
in the White House during which he rose from the position of Pantry Man to Head
Butler by the time he retired in 1986. In that capacity, the African-American
son of a sharecropper felt privileged to be an eyewitness to history, since his
tenure coincided with the implementation of most of the landmark pieces of
legislation dismantling the Jim Crow system of racial segregation.
Directed by
two-time Oscar-nominee Lee Daniels, The Butler is a father-son biopic relating
events in Allen’s life as they unfolded against the backdrop of the Civil
Rights Movement. This fictionalized account features Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker in the title role as Cecil
Gaines, and his A-list supporting cast includes fellow Oscar-winners
Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams and Melissa
Leo, as well as nominees Terrence Howard and Oprah Winfrey.
The point
of departure is a plantation in the Deep South,
where Cecil witnesses his father’s (David Banner) murder on the cotton field
for protesting his mother’s (Mariah Carey) rape at the hand of an overseer.
Because the perpetrator was never brought to justice, the youngster gets the
message at an early age that “Any white man could kill us at any time and not
be punished for it.”
Therefore,
eager to avoid the same fate as his dad, he skips town as a teenager, settling in
Washington, DC where he lands steady work as a bartender
in a hotel catering to an upscale clientele. There he also meets Gloria
(Winfrey), the maid he would one day marry and start a family with.
Cecil’s
sterling reputation as a polite and deferential black man eventually reaches
the White House, where he takes a position on the express understanding that
“You hear nothing. You see nothing. You only serve.” Although he manages to
maintain an inscrutably apolitical façade on the job, the same can’t be said
for the home front, where current events are freely debated.
There,
Cecil finds himself increasingly at odds with his elder son, Louis (David
Oyelowo), a civil rights activist inclined to participate in voter registration
marches, sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and freedom bus rides. The simmering
tension between the two builds over the years to the boiling point when Louis
derisively refers to his as father an Uncle Tom.
At that
juncture, Cecil’s protective spouse intervenes to slap her son before uttering
the moving line likely to land Oprah Winfrey another Academy Award nomination:
“Everything you have, and everything you are, is because of that butler.” However,
Forest Whitaker is even more deserving of accolades, delivering a nonpareil
performance as a humble provider understandably reluctant to rock the boat.
Kudos to
Lee Daniels for crafting such a gut-wrenching tour de force which never hits a
false note while chronicling critical moments in the African-American fight for
equality.
Excellent
(4 stars)
Rated PG-13
for violence, sexuality, smoking, profanity, ethnic slurs, disturbing images
and mature themes
Running time: 132 minutes
Distributor: The
Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Lee
Daniels’ The Butler, visit:
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