Written
by Danny Strong, Lee Daniel's The Butler is
loosely based on the career of Eugene Allen, the
head butler at the White House for thirty-four
years, serving Presidents from Truman to Ronald
Reagan and living through some of the most
tumultuous years in American history. The film
weaves events through the eyes of the butler
(Forrest Whitaker, renamed Cecil Gaines) and his
eldest son Louis (David Oyelowo), dramatizing
different perspectives on the Black experience.
As in many bio-pics, events in Allen's life,
chronicled in an article in the Washington Post,
are changed for dramatic purposes but the impact
of Allen's life remains.
The film follows Gaines as a boy (Michael
Rainey, Jr.) growing up on a Southern cotton
plantation in 1926 where he witnesses the rape
of his mother (Mariah Carey) and the murder of
his father (David Banner) by their boss,
Westfall (Alex Pettyfer). It's Westfall's
grandmother Annabelle (Vanessa Redgrave) who
reaches out to the boy and teaches him how to
become a good servant, setting tables and
cleaning her home or as she puts it, teaching
him “how to be the house nigger." After leaving
the plantation, the teenage Gaines (Ami Ameen)
is mentored by Maynard, an elderly butler at a
hotel in North Carolina, who shows him the
proper way to serve the white man.
As the adult Cecil becomes a waiter at the
Excelsior Hotel in Washington, D.C., he falls in
love with and marries Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), a
maid at the hotel. Their marriage would survive
until his death though strained by his long
absences from the house and Gloria's drinking.
After years of exemplary service at the hotel,
he is recommended by a member of President
Truman's staff to work as a servant in the White
House. In his training by the maitre d' (Colman
Domingo) and the head butler (Cuba Gooding),
Gaines is told to see nothing, hear nothing,
obey without question, and keep politics out of
the job. Though his role is in essence a menial
one, he never relinquishes his dignity and
humanity, repeatedly asking his supervisor that
the black staff be paid wages in line with their
white colleagues.
Gaines is present in the oval office when
President Eisenhower (Robin Williams) decides on
sending federal troops to enforce desegregation
in Little Rock, when a drunk Richard Nixon (John
Cusack) attempts to promote black businesses as
a means of counteracting the growing ranks of
black power militants, when LBJ (Liev Schrieber)
sits on the toilet barking orders, when a
thoughtful JFK (James Marsden) requires help
with his back pain while watching civil rights
demonstrations on TV, and when Ronald Reagan
informs Republican senators that he is going to
veto sanctions against South Africa. The segment
with the Presidents played by well-known actors,
however, is a little more than a sideshow and
the weakest part of the film.
As Louis matures, a rift develops between him
and his father (younger son Charlie (Elijah
Kelly) chooses to fight in Vietnam) as their
philosophies for achieving equality diverge
greatly, perhaps reflecting the larger context
of the peaceful non-violent approach of Martin
Luther King and the philosophy of Malcolm X who
believed that the fight should be waged by any
means necessary, including violence or other
aggressive actions. Dropping out of college,
Louis becomes an activist in the civil rights
struggle, joining the movement to desegregate
Woolworth's lunch counters, becoming a freedom
rider whose bus is attacked by white-hooded Klan
members, enduring beatings and jail terms and
flirting with becoming a member of the Black
Panther Party, whose emphasis on Black pride led
to the Black Power movement and the saying
“black is beautiful”.
At a family dinner in which Louis brings his
militant girlfriend Carol (Yaya Alafia), the
elder Gaines overreacts to Louis' criticism of
actor Sidney Poitier and tells him to leave the
house, an altercation that sadly lasts many
years. It is only when Cecil's view of the
importance of his work in helping to achieve
Black equality is supported by Martin Luther
King, and when he joins his son in a
demonstration for Nelson Mandela, that Louis
begins to see his father in a different light.
Lee Daniel's The Butler has everything on board
to make it a triumph: an outstanding ensemble
cast that includes Oscar-worthy performances
from Forrest Whitaker and from Oprah Winfrey as
Cecil's wife, historical material of towering
impact, and a searing family drama, yet, despite
these qualities, the film is often heavy-handed
and lacking in the subtlety and poetry that
transforms melodrama into art.
It only truly comes alive when it moves away
from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and out into the
street, bringing us to the front lines of the
struggle where hate-filled mobs beat young
people, black and white, asking only to be
served at a lunch counter, where a police
confrontation, directed against a peaceful
voting rights demonstration in Selma, turns
ugly, and where dogs and fire hoses are turned
on marchers in Birmingham. If for no other
reason than to inform a new generation about the
courageous people who were willing to put their
lives on the line for freedom and justice, The
Butler deserves to be seen.
