Lee Daniel's The Butler

The Butler Film Critique

Lee Daniel’s “The Butler” is a historical drama film produced by Laura Ziskin Productions and distributed by the Weinstein Film Company. I saw The Butler when it premiered on August 16, 2013, at 6pm inside AMC Theatres. Me and my family went to see it, my mother being particularly interested due to loving black history movies.

The Butler is centered on the life of White House butler Cecil Gaines serving 8 presidents during his tenure from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan as he witnesses the Civil Rights Movement firsthand. The movie is loosely based on real life butler Eugene Allen. It focuses on African American historical events such as the Little Rock Nine, Nashville Sit ins, Freedom Rides, the Kennedy Assassination, Martin Luther King Jr Assassination, Vietnam War right up into the 2008 presidential inaguration of Barack Obama, the first African-American President.

The main characters of The Butler are the protagonist Cecil Gaines, portrayed by Forest Whitaker, a black man born a sharecropper’s son in Georgia who gets a job in Washington in the 1950s to serve as butler in the White House. The other main characters are Gloria Gaines, portrayed by the one and only Oprah Winfrey, is Cecil’s wife who almost has an affair with Cecil’s best friend and briefly becomes an alcoholic. Louis Gaines, Cecil’s son who becomes a civil rights activist by joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, working with Martin Luther King Jr, becoming a Black Panther shortly and playing a pivotal role in the sit ins and the Selma Voting Rights Movement.

The events of the film take place in various locations. At the beginning it is Macon, Georgia in the 20s and 30s where Cecil as a child, witnesses his father shot and killed in front of his eyes. Other locations are Washington D.C through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 2008, where Cecil interacts with the presidents of those eras and the White House supervisor on requesting equal pay for the black, White House staff. Nashville, Tennessee where Louis Gaines goes to attend Fisk University and participate in the sit ins. As well as Alabama where the Selma march, Birmingham riot, and the Ku Klux Klan attack on the Freedom Riders.

Some of my favorite scenes are the KKK attack on Freedom Riders because it was like seeing the actual thing due to how intense the action was right until the infamous explosion of the freedom bus. The KKK members halting the bus and decimating it and attacking the riders was extremely accurate. The next scene that I like is the pride Cecil exhibits when he is finally recognized as a revered member of the White House for all his years of service, when he is invited to meet President Barack Obama in the Oval Office at the end of the movie. Forest Whitaker puts icing on the cake when the Chief Usher Stephen Rechon says he will show Cecil the way to the oval office and Cecil says, “I know where to go.”

Now if I had to point out my least favorite scenes the MLK and Kennedy Assassinations could have been done better because the film does not directly show the slaying of the two leaders. For President Kennedy it showed a transition from his speech on civil rights to a gunshot and his wife Jackie covered in blood mourning him in the White House. While Martin Luther King Jr. shows the iconic activist standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel and a gunshot is heard which transitions into Cecil seeing riots around town with people blowing up buildings.

This might seem a little hardcore but the entire Civil Rights Movement was hardcore so no boundaries should be drawn. I would definitely recommend “The Butler” to others especially if they want to get a crash course on major events of the Civil Rights Movement and understand the Presidents who headed those events. I recommend stocking up on snacks and paying close attention on what happens in the movie because it is a rather long film because it’s 2 hours and 15 minutes. Unlike other black history movies, The Butler jumps into the action from beginning, middle to the end and maintains a steady pace that will keep viewers entertained.

My rating for Lee Daniel’s The Butler, is 4 out of 5-star rating, because the movie just has the unique blend of comedy, drama, and historical representation. I give 4 instead of 5 due to the moderate showcasing of the MLK and President Kennedy assassinations, but overall The Butler is a classic everyone should watch.