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| The Butler – review | The Butler – review |
| (4 months later) | |
| History is written by the victors, they say; this movie looks as if the history of American race politics as written by Julian Fellowes. It is based on the life of Eugene Allen, a black butler in the White House whose human-interest story was recounted by Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood as part of his paper's Obama victory coverage in 2008. | History is written by the victors, they say; this movie looks as if the history of American race politics as written by Julian Fellowes. It is based on the life of Eugene Allen, a black butler in the White House whose human-interest story was recounted by Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood as part of his paper's Obama victory coverage in 2008. |
| Allen had a ringside seat at history by serving every president from Eisenhower to Reagan and finally lived to see the dream come true. A black man was in the White House – in a position other than menial. | Allen had a ringside seat at history by serving every president from Eisenhower to Reagan and finally lived to see the dream come true. A black man was in the White House – in a position other than menial. |
| This treacly and stilted movie, directed by Lee Daniels, invites its audience on a guided tour of the postwar White House, upstairs and down, unveiling a waxwork set of president-cameos. The film renames Allen as Cecil Gaines and invents for him a horrifying racist trauma occurring in his childhood, along with a troubled marriage and a son involved in the Black Panthers. So Gaines has to bear an eye-catching fictionalised burden of very real historical issues, a burden that his animatronic employers cannot fail to notice, allowing them tacitly to claim a personal interest in civil rights, which is extremely flattering, especially to John F Kennedy. | This treacly and stilted movie, directed by Lee Daniels, invites its audience on a guided tour of the postwar White House, upstairs and down, unveiling a waxwork set of president-cameos. The film renames Allen as Cecil Gaines and invents for him a horrifying racist trauma occurring in his childhood, along with a troubled marriage and a son involved in the Black Panthers. So Gaines has to bear an eye-catching fictionalised burden of very real historical issues, a burden that his animatronic employers cannot fail to notice, allowing them tacitly to claim a personal interest in civil rights, which is extremely flattering, especially to John F Kennedy. |
| Forest Whitaker plays Gaines with poise and restraint, but a string of latexed character actors fake up the commanders-in-chief: Robin Williams is Eisenhower; James Marsden is a high-minded and uxorious Kennedy; Liev Schreiber's Johnson barks orders seated on the lavatory; John Cusack is mean old Richard Nixon, sweating and mopping his brow, just as in the TV debate. Alan Rickman shows up as a rather boringly underpowered Ronald Reagan, and Jane Fonda has got to be kidding as Nancy Reagan, a support cameo so bland as to efface any conceivable "Hanoi Jane" irony. | Forest Whitaker plays Gaines with poise and restraint, but a string of latexed character actors fake up the commanders-in-chief: Robin Williams is Eisenhower; James Marsden is a high-minded and uxorious Kennedy; Liev Schreiber's Johnson barks orders seated on the lavatory; John Cusack is mean old Richard Nixon, sweating and mopping his brow, just as in the TV debate. Alan Rickman shows up as a rather boringly underpowered Ronald Reagan, and Jane Fonda has got to be kidding as Nancy Reagan, a support cameo so bland as to efface any conceivable "Hanoi Jane" irony. |
| Poor old Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter do not rate dramatic portrayal but just show up as themselves in brief TV clips, implying a lack of significance for those figures, dismissed at the polls after their paltry single terms. No less a person than Oprah Winfrey arrives, like a head of state, to play Cecil's troubled wife, Gloria. Strangely, as Whitaker looks older and older, Oprah's Gloria stays the same until the end, when she suddenly slumps into old age. | Poor old Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter do not rate dramatic portrayal but just show up as themselves in brief TV clips, implying a lack of significance for those figures, dismissed at the polls after their paltry single terms. No less a person than Oprah Winfrey arrives, like a head of state, to play Cecil's troubled wife, Gloria. Strangely, as Whitaker looks older and older, Oprah's Gloria stays the same until the end, when she suddenly slumps into old age. |
| This movie's stiff self-consciousness about its historical responsibility prevents it from being as limber as Tate Taylor's The Help (2011), and balancing anti-racist anger with demure insistence on the white rulers' good faith means it can't let rip with the passion of Daniels's earlier film Precious (2009), or his brilliant pulp thriller The Paperboy (2011). Television's Downton Abbey has made picturesque servitude dramatically fashionable again, but weirdly what The Butler resembles more than anything else is Peter Morgan's award-winning stage-play The Audience, in which the Queen – as discreet as any butler – meets a series of British prime ministers. | This movie's stiff self-consciousness about its historical responsibility prevents it from being as limber as Tate Taylor's The Help (2011), and balancing anti-racist anger with demure insistence on the white rulers' good faith means it can't let rip with the passion of Daniels's earlier film Precious (2009), or his brilliant pulp thriller The Paperboy (2011). Television's Downton Abbey has made picturesque servitude dramatically fashionable again, but weirdly what The Butler resembles more than anything else is Peter Morgan's award-winning stage-play The Audience, in which the Queen – as discreet as any butler – meets a series of British prime ministers. |
| Gaines is supposed to have mastered the servant's smooth art back on the plantation of his childhood when he was allowed to help at meals. From then on, the hateful HN-word is thrown at him: the H standing for House. Is that all his butler job is? Is it a quisling position, or a dignified way of subverting racism by showing that African-Americans are industrious and dependable? Well, one telling fictional touch is Cecil getting the job after serving drinks at a hotel: a bunch of loathsome bigots in the bar (including a political bigwig) try to humiliate Cecil by asking him what he thinks of segregation: Gaines's diplomatic endorsement of their reactionary views gets him the White House gig. Screenwriter Danny Strong may have been inspired by James Ivory's 1993 movie The Remains of the Day, in which the master sneeringly invites Anthony Hopkins's butler Stevens to give his political views. Stevens is a tragic, pathetic figure, but we are supposed to admire Gaines's endurance and everyman heroism. | Gaines is supposed to have mastered the servant's smooth art back on the plantation of his childhood when he was allowed to help at meals. From then on, the hateful HN-word is thrown at him: the H standing for House. Is that all his butler job is? Is it a quisling position, or a dignified way of subverting racism by showing that African-Americans are industrious and dependable? Well, one telling fictional touch is Cecil getting the job after serving drinks at a hotel: a bunch of loathsome bigots in the bar (including a political bigwig) try to humiliate Cecil by asking him what he thinks of segregation: Gaines's diplomatic endorsement of their reactionary views gets him the White House gig. Screenwriter Danny Strong may have been inspired by James Ivory's 1993 movie The Remains of the Day, in which the master sneeringly invites Anthony Hopkins's butler Stevens to give his political views. Stevens is a tragic, pathetic figure, but we are supposed to admire Gaines's endurance and everyman heroism. |
| It doesn't quite work. On the home front, Cecil is portrayed as a tough, caring father to his two sons, but in the all-important work arena, he is a submissive son to a succession of hammy daddy figures, posturing away behind the Oval Office desk. He does not grow or change in relation to them, and their relation to him does not evolve either. The movie (fictionally) claims for Cecil a victory concerning black servants' pay in the White House – and this on Reagan's watch, no less, though we don't get any scene in which the Gipper actually confirms this in person. There is a kind of poignancy in Cecil's stolid persistence. But any tears or cheers soon give way to a muffled yawn. | It doesn't quite work. On the home front, Cecil is portrayed as a tough, caring father to his two sons, but in the all-important work arena, he is a submissive son to a succession of hammy daddy figures, posturing away behind the Oval Office desk. He does not grow or change in relation to them, and their relation to him does not evolve either. The movie (fictionally) claims for Cecil a victory concerning black servants' pay in the White House – and this on Reagan's watch, no less, though we don't get any scene in which the Gipper actually confirms this in person. There is a kind of poignancy in Cecil's stolid persistence. But any tears or cheers soon give way to a muffled yawn. |
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