Many of my friends have spoken glowingly of Lee Daniels' The Butler, a film which tells the story of White House butler Cecil Gaines, who worked under seven presidents. The film seems to have stirred up for my friends strong memories of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. While they see the film as a great historical lesson, I found the film, although peopled with excellent actors, poorly written and episodic—it is history lite, the kind of film a high school teacher could easily show his students to give a two hour overview of the movement.
The film starts with a powerhouse beginning. Cecil as a boy picks cotton with his family when the young master of the plantation rapes his mother and then shoots his father. The white mother of the plantation owner, a beautifully nuanced elderly Vanessa Redgrave, saves Cecil to work in the house. This is the film’s unredeemable Miss Daisy. Quickly Cecil steals food and then suddenly proves he can be a good butler in a hotel. As Forest Whitaker takes over Cecil’s role, the plot becomes so condensed and caught up in its narrative that there is no time for drama in depth. Without any real setup, Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey are married with children. The film moves from scene to scene with title cards giving a year—it feels like a slide show of all the key moments in the history of the black movement from the late 1920s to the present day through the eyes of Cecil Gaines and alternately Louis, Gaines' eldest son. Everything tends to be telegraphed rather than developed.
We see brief scenes of each president for whom Gaines worked (except the modern living ones), but none has a scene of any substance. Ike drinks coffee and worries about Gov. Faubus and the riots in the South. Vice President Nixon comes to the kitchen to convince the help to vote for him. Kennedy seems oblivious to what is going on until his brother Bobby clues him in. Johnson rages while seated on a toilet. Nixon as president lounges on his couch saying he won’t resign. Reagan shares that he feels he’s wrong on not seeing how apartheid in Africa relates to the American Black Movement. Limiting them to one or two scenes per president makes the film feel quite insubstantial. (For those people outraged by Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan, her scenes don’t amount to enough screen time to even throw a fuss.)
A consistent problem is that we are TOLD what we are supposed to know or feel: Oprah’s character is seen drinking and unhappy, then suddenly we learn she is an alcoholic, and just as suddenly she has stopped drinking. With a talent like Oprah one wonders how one scene at least dealing with her conversion could have been ignored. The couple have two sons, Louis immersed in the Civil Rights Movement and Charlie who almost runs off to the Viet Nam war waving his country’s flag. We know who won’t make it to the end of the film—history as melodrama.
Let me use another example of the problem I saw. Louis Gaines is a racial activist who goes off to college, studies civil disobedience, and becomes involved in every aspect of the Civil Rights movement from the sit-ins, the freedom rides in Alabama, to hanging with Martin Luther King and after his assassination moving on to the Black Panthers. After dramatically being kicked out of his father’s house he breaks up with his Angela Davis-like girlfriend, goes back to school for a degree, and becomes a teacher. Later Gloria describes to her husband how Louis came home one time when the husband was gone and found her drunk on the floor, having soiled herself. She describes how lovingly he treated her, picked her up and cleaned her up. This is a major episode in the arc of her relationship with her son and her drinking, but it is only described, it is not shown.
An old writing adage says, “Show ‘em, don’t tell ‘em.”
By the end of the film, we have seen Oprah and Forest have their turn at aging, but the script never takes the time to show us the characters really growing or aging, except in brief snapshots.
For me the film pales in the comparison to such films as The Help, Cecily Tyson’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman, Backstairs at the White House, and so many others. Lee Daniels is a competent director, but his script fails him continually.
Lee Daniel’s The Butler (2013) ***
The film starts with a powerhouse beginning. Cecil as a boy picks cotton with his family when the young master of the plantation rapes his mother and then shoots his father. The white mother of the plantation owner, a beautifully nuanced elderly Vanessa Redgrave, saves Cecil to work in the house. This is the film’s unredeemable Miss Daisy. Quickly Cecil steals food and then suddenly proves he can be a good butler in a hotel. As Forest Whitaker takes over Cecil’s role, the plot becomes so condensed and caught up in its narrative that there is no time for drama in depth. Without any real setup, Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey are married with children. The film moves from scene to scene with title cards giving a year—it feels like a slide show of all the key moments in the history of the black movement from the late 1920s to the present day through the eyes of Cecil Gaines and alternately Louis, Gaines' eldest son. Everything tends to be telegraphed rather than developed.
We see brief scenes of each president for whom Gaines worked (except the modern living ones), but none has a scene of any substance. Ike drinks coffee and worries about Gov. Faubus and the riots in the South. Vice President Nixon comes to the kitchen to convince the help to vote for him. Kennedy seems oblivious to what is going on until his brother Bobby clues him in. Johnson rages while seated on a toilet. Nixon as president lounges on his couch saying he won’t resign. Reagan shares that he feels he’s wrong on not seeing how apartheid in Africa relates to the American Black Movement. Limiting them to one or two scenes per president makes the film feel quite insubstantial. (For those people outraged by Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan, her scenes don’t amount to enough screen time to even throw a fuss.)
A consistent problem is that we are TOLD what we are supposed to know or feel: Oprah’s character is seen drinking and unhappy, then suddenly we learn she is an alcoholic, and just as suddenly she has stopped drinking. With a talent like Oprah one wonders how one scene at least dealing with her conversion could have been ignored. The couple have two sons, Louis immersed in the Civil Rights Movement and Charlie who almost runs off to the Viet Nam war waving his country’s flag. We know who won’t make it to the end of the film—history as melodrama.
Let me use another example of the problem I saw. Louis Gaines is a racial activist who goes off to college, studies civil disobedience, and becomes involved in every aspect of the Civil Rights movement from the sit-ins, the freedom rides in Alabama, to hanging with Martin Luther King and after his assassination moving on to the Black Panthers. After dramatically being kicked out of his father’s house he breaks up with his Angela Davis-like girlfriend, goes back to school for a degree, and becomes a teacher. Later Gloria describes to her husband how Louis came home one time when the husband was gone and found her drunk on the floor, having soiled herself. She describes how lovingly he treated her, picked her up and cleaned her up. This is a major episode in the arc of her relationship with her son and her drinking, but it is only described, it is not shown.
An old writing adage says, “Show ‘em, don’t tell ‘em.”
By the end of the film, we have seen Oprah and Forest have their turn at aging, but the script never takes the time to show us the characters really growing or aging, except in brief snapshots.
For me the film pales in the comparison to such films as The Help, Cecily Tyson’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman, Backstairs at the White House, and so many others. Lee Daniels is a competent director, but his script fails him continually.
Lee Daniel’s The Butler (2013) ***
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