The butler of the title is Cecil Gaines, perfectly played by standout black actor Forest Whitaker. After his father is shot in cold blood by the white son of a Macon, Georgia cotton plantation owner, eight year old Cecil is brought from field work into the mansion to be taught how to be "a house [n-word]." That is a term used throughout the movie by blacks, whites, presidents and servants, mostly all without compunction. Once he becomes a teenager, Cecil sets out on his own and, after being taken under wing by a head butler in a North Carolina hotel, he accepts a position as a junior butler in the White House. It is at this point in the movie that the viewers are sent on a whirlwind history course, not too much unlike my eighth grade geography students.
When Cecil starts his long tenure, President Dwight Eisenhower (Robin Williams, believe it or not) is in charge. The big issue of the day was the 1957 confrontation which occurred at Little Rock Central High School, when the state authorities, under the direction of Governor Orval Faubus, defied federal law and attempted to prevent nine black students from attending class. Ike could not believe Faubus' actions, and wasted little time sending out the US Army to protect the kids. Cecil, although instructed more than once by the head butler to "see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing," took it all in, like a fly on the wall.
Next we are watching President John Kennedy (James Marsden), accompanied by his wife, Lyla Garrity (oops, I mean Jacqueline, played by Minka Kelly of Friday Night Lights fame). Of all the mini-chapters in the film, this gets my vote for the weakest. Kennedy confides to Cecil that until he became president, he never quite grasped the plight of African-Americans. Really? Given the fact that Kennedy served in both houses of Congress for fourteen years before he became president, that "admission" is hard to believe. The most ridiculous scene in the film shows Jacqueline, still wearing her blood stained pink suit, sitting alone in the White House on the day her husband was assassinated in Dallas. Only Cecil is nearby. Shades of Forrest Gump.
President Lyndon Johnson (Liev Schreiber) follows JFK as the chief executive. Of course LBJ was in charge when the Civil Rights Act Of 1964 was passed. As luck would have it, Cecil always seemed to find himself near Johnson at the most dramatic times, whether it be in the Oval Office or right outside the presidential "throne," on which LBJ sat, conducting business as usual while he answered mother nature's call. Schreiber may not look much like Johnson, but his short stint as the big Texan was the funniest of all the presidential portrayals.
Presidents Richard Nixon (John Cusak, complete with prosthetic ski nose) and Ronald Reagan (veteran actor Alan Rickman) follow in quick order. Although these two men were president for over fourteen years, their tenure is only skimmed, a weakness which pervades the film. Nixon is portrayed like a clueless stumblebum, without one positive (or even neutral) attribute. Reagan is the president who gives the black White House staff their long-deserved raises, but when he refuses to consider putting the pressure on South Africa, a US ally, to terminate its apartheid policies, his position goes unexplained to the viewer.
You may ask, "What about Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the two presidents who served in between Nixon and Reagan?" The answer is that the film makers decided not to cast those parts, opting instead to show brief news reel footage of each. Well, at least for that decision they were impartial, as Ford was a Republican and Carter was a Democrat!
Running parallel with the White House scenes is the story arch of Cecil's family. He is married to Gloria, played by Oprah Winfrey, who seems to be on the screen almost as much as Whitaker. Cecil and Gloria have two sons, one of whom, Louis (David Oyelowo), goes off to college and becomes active in civil rights causes and later the Black Panther movement. The most effective scene in the film is the rapid back-and-forth transposition between Cecil setting a dinner table in the White House and the famous sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina by a small group of black college students, including Louis. The disparity between the elegance and pomp of the dining room and the violence and disgraceful inhumanity at the lunch counter is gripping.
One's evaluation of this movie's merits hinges to a large extent on whether the choice to merely touch the surface of each of the presidential administrations from the mid-fifties to the mid-eighties was a wise one. The answer is debatable, but most of the negative impressions I feel about The Butler stem from that choice. The movie shows civil rights as being the only issue addressed by the presidents over that span, when in fact it unfortunately had to take a back seat to other burning issues of the day. The promotions and posters for the film use the tag line, "One quiet voice can ignite a revolution." While it's true that Cecil's voice was, in fact, quiet, he certainly did not start a revolution in any sense of the word.
Most of the casting decisions were good, if not excellent, choices, but there is one swing-and-miss that bears mentioning. Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave to see his wife, Nancy, played by the Communist-sympathizing, anti-aircraft posing traitor, Jane Fonda. You have got to be kidding me! If Nancy has any interest in seeing The Butler, I hope her friends and family talk her out of it.
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