Lee Daniels’ “The Butler” is a well-intentioned historical
drama, infused with the fervor of activism and the heart of American longing.
It’s a film that highlights a large cast of interesting black actors—in a time
when many mainstream films don’t—and it actually gives them something
substantial to do. It’s an ambitious picture, told with an epic scope but it tries
to be too many things for too many people, and it’s because its ambition that the story doesn’t totally hang together.
Lee
Daniels, who previously directed the 2009, Oscar nominated film “Precious”, is one
of Oprah’s many victorious endorsements, along with Barack Obama’s presidential win
the year before. With “Precious”, Daniels made a very stylish Sundance hit, with
some very moving performances—albeit in the service of a senselessly dark,
emotionally manipulative and overwritten screenplay. It’s no surprise then that
his newest film “The Butler”—another film dealing with a loaded ‘message’—echoes
a lot of the same highs and lows.
This
story chronicles the life of Cecil Gains (Forrest Whitaker), an African
America, white house butler who worked under several different administrations,
during key the decades of the civil rights movement. Though his early life started badly, when his
father was murdered in a southern plantation, he eventually landed a few high-profile jobs as the domestic help, where he was taught to stay quiet
and respectful for his white employers.
After
Cecil began his long career at the white house, his life began to complicate.
His wife (Oprah Winfrey) delved deeper into alcoholism and his two sons took on
different paths as well. His youngest son Charlie (Elijah Kelley) served his
country in Vietnam and his first son Louis (David Oyelow) became an activist
and a freedom rider in the dangerously racist South.
The
film works hard to tie together it’s two objectives; an emotional story about a
strained relationship between a father and son whose ideologies don’t see eye
to eye and a thematic arc about civil rights and how far we have come as a racially
diverse country. This dramatic effort is commendable but the screenplay by Danny
Strong doesn’t know how to weave these two threads together very well, often digressing
into nostalgia as a lazy way to transition back and forth. Lee Daniels, though he is very good at lighting and framing his scenes and coaxing
great performances from his actors, he isn’t
as good at avoiding eye-rolling sensationalism or cringe-worthy sentimentality.
Like a
non-ironic “Forrest Gump”, “The Butler” progresses through the 40s’ up to the 00s’, and
along the way it feels the need to make ridiculous stops to observe the
changing fashion trends, as well as the high-school-social-studies political news-bites
of each decade, as a short-hand way to remind us when and where we are.
Also
problematic, each president that Cecil worked for are all distractingly portrayed by well-known actors—Robin Williams as
Eisenhower, James Marsden as JFK, John Cusack as Nixon, and Alan Rickman as Regan.
Each actor gives it their best shot but it becomes increasingly difficult to peel
them away from their other onscreen personas.
But
despite the fact that the film doesn’t exactly become the instant classic it’s
begging to be, it’s not unwatchable either.
In fact, chunks of it are very nice. Winfrey and Whitaker are both
terrific in their parts, as well as Oyelow as their embittered, disenfranchised
son. Side performances from Cuba Gooding Jr. and rock star Lenny Kravits, as
Cecil’s white house companions, also stand out.
Many scenes and dialogue set-pieces are
individually moving and well-conceived, even if the movie as a whole feels like
a saccharine over-played NBC, TV mini-series.
The editing is occasionally clever and about every other scene in the
film is surprising. The scenes in between, however, are too simple, too corny,
or too melodramatic for this movie to be taken as seriously it presents itself.
Grade: C+
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug-2013
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