Lee Daniels' The Butler (DVD REVIEW)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
DVD Review
by Kam Williams
Forest
Whitaker Shines in Biopic about Butler
Who Served Eight Presidents
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.”
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 memorable line: “Everything you have, and everything you are, is because of
that butler.” Kudos to Forest Whitaker for another nonpareil performance as a
humble provider understandably reluctant to rock the boat. Ditto Lee Daniels for crafting a
gut-wrenching tour de force 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: Anchor Bay
/ The Weinstein Company
The Butler Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Extras: Deleted scenes;
gag reel; The Original Freedom Riders; “You and I Ain’t Nothin’ No More”
performed by Gladys Knight and Lenny Kravitz; and Lee Daniels’ The Butler: An
American Story.
To see a trailer for The
Butler, visit:
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