Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Directed by Lee Daniels
Reaction to “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” has been mixed, which isn’t entirely surprising as it’s a film that somehow manages to teeter on the knife edge between being wonderful and being ridiculous. For me, it managed to fall on the positive side of that line but that outcome wasn’t especially clear as the movie progressed.
The saving grace was the disclaimer at the start of the film that states that it’s “inspired” by a true story. It doesn’t make the claim that it’s true, nor does it use the slightly lesser claim of being “based” on a true story. Instead, by using “inspired,” we’re told that somewhere in the background, there’s a true story that caused this fictional story to be written. And it is a fiction, albeit one that bears a remarkable similarity, in some respects at least, to the story that inspired it.
In the film, Forest Whitaker plays Cecil Gaines, an African American who secures a job in the White House and serves seven Presidents. The inspiration for the character and the story is Eugene Allen, also African American, who worked in the White House from 1952 to 1986, serving eight Presidents along the way. Allen was born in 1919, in segregated Virginia, and died in 2010 after having seen America elect its first black President. And it’s that time frame and that remarkable change in the nation that forms the core of the story of Cecil Gaines in the film.
The film starts in 1926, with a young Cecil working alongside his parents on a cotton farm, in conditions that aren’t markedly different from those he might have experienced had he been born 100 years earlier. He witnesses the rape of his mother and the violent death of his father, both at the hands of a white man who acts with total impunity. After those events, he’s trained to work in the main house and picks up a skill set he utilizes for the rest of his life – including being so invisible in a room that the room feels empty to his white employers, despite his ever vigilant presence. Years later, after being seen by a White House manager while working in an upscale Washington hotel, he’s invited to the White House and offered a job as a Butler.
In real life, Eugene Allen worked his way through various hotel and resort jobs until he applied to the White House, and was hired as a Pantry Man – but the factual discrepancies aren’t important given that the film acknowledges its own status in that regard. This isn’t Eugene’s story, it’s Cecil’s – and Cecil is a proxy, through which the audience can watch the passage of American history. In that sense, it doesn’t matter that Cecil’s childhood experiences might not match Eugene’s, it matter that both were children when such experiences were a reality in some parts of the country.
Similarly, as Cecil serves his decades in the White House, witnessing, meeting, and even becoming personally familiar with multiple Presidents and their families, he also witnesses the scope of the civil rights movement, from its birth, through the passage of legislation, to the moment in time that a majority of voting Americans would elect a black President.
To illustrate this, the film uses a convenient device to give us both sides of those events – glimpses of political moments as well as archival and recreated moments on buses, in diners, and on the streets of America as people fought for racial justice. That narrative device comes in the form of Cecil’s older son who not only joins that fight but somehow manages to be in the middle of almost every significant event in that struggle.
And this is where the film borders on the ridiculous – as we’re shown Louis Gaines, Cecil’s son, in event after event that draw the attention of a nation as well as the individualized attention of the Presidents Cecil is attending. If one views the film as a literal story, it’s a tough sell. But if one sees the film as the illustration of the historical arc, with Cecil and Louis as, respectively, relatively passive and active participant observers of that arc, the device works.
The film is aided enormously by an impressive cast, with Oprah Winfrey dominating the screen as Cecil’s wife Gloria, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard among Cecil’s friends, and Robin Wiliams, Liev Schreiber, Alan Rickman, and John Cusack among the Presidents. We’re even given, briefly, Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan and Vanessa Redgrave as the matriarch on the farm who pulls young Cecil aside to be taught and trained for house service. It’s a cast that will likely be considered for ensemble awards as well as the individual attention that will likely fall on Winfrey and others.
The depiction of multiple Presidents, much like the film, is managed in such a way as to give a sense of their character, as well as the time and place in which they served. These aren’t performances looking for literal accuracy, but they’re neat in the manner in which they convey personality, often through very abbreviated screen time and with occasional grounding in moments from Eugene Allen’s own life – as with the example of one of President Kennedy’s ties being given to Eugene/Cecil by Mrs. Kennedy.
Overall, the film isn’t intending to depict a real family living a real life – the circumstances and the convenient contrast between the experiences of the father and son are too extreme for that – and if one tries to view it on that level, it’s likely to be bothersome. But what the film does, in a manner that really hits home towards the end, is depict the remarkable change that can take place in a country, even one as large and diverse as this, within the scope of a single lifetime. It isn’t about whether or not a single person watched his black father be murdered and later met a black President, it’s about a period in history in which those two events could happen to the same person.
The other somewhat unusual aspect of the film is that director Lee Daniels has chosen to insert his own name into the title. He has a short but impressive track record, including such films as 2009’s “Precious” and last year’s under-appreciated “The Paperboy,” but this seems a little odd. However, whether odd or not, it’s bound to raise his visibility and name recognition. And he’s made another good film, regardless of whether or not everybody will see it that way.
