Lee Daniels' The Butler

There is a poignant scene in Driving Miss Daisy in which Hoke, the chauffeur, brings Daisy to a dinner at which Martin Luther King, Jr. is speaking.  Daisy goes without an escort into the large mansion where the speech is to be given, leaving Hoke to listen to the speech on the car radio.  Sadly, there is nothing as subtly revelatory in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which aspires to greatness – and offers some great performances – but ultimately sags under the weight of its own self-importance.

Now before e-flaming me with your comments, let me clarify a few things.  First, I am a white male who, while embracing liberal values on matters of race and equality, has lived a privileged life.  I recognize that my reading of the film may be quite different from that of an African-American or a person who has known less privilege than I have, and I do not presume to speak for them.  Second, my purpose in this blog is to analyze and evaluate films based on their merits as film, which while not entirely independent of their subject matter, is as much concerned with how they say what they say as with what they are saying.

There is no doubt that Lee Daniels’ The Butler has some very important things to say about the struggle for civil rights, the expressions and experience of racism both overt and subtle, and the tensions the civil rights movement caused within the African-American community itself.  These are all the more timely in the wake of the Martin-Zimmerman verdict and the voiding of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  It follows the story of a White House butler named Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) who serves during the terms of seven presidents.  While “inspired by a true story” the film is highly fictionalized in an attempt to portray the full history of the civil rights movement from Depression-era lynchings to the Obama election through the experiences of one man and his family.

That is also its biggest problem.  The film’s scope is so broad that it overwhelms its narrative framework.  It uses the narrative device of the father-son relationship between Cecil and his son Louis to create artificial tension around key moments in the movement, where Louis seems to be ever-present like a black Forrest Gump.  The more subtle – and natural – tensions are found where Gaines’s sense of duty and reserve as a butler conflict with the racially insensitive and oppressive policies and practices of presidential power he must silently observe.  As with Mookie in Do the Right Thing, who must choose between love and hate in the face of a personally kind but nevertheless racist employer, one waits for Gaines to reach his breaking point.  When it comes, it is directed not at his employer, but at his son.  The film’s perspective, it seems to me, is summarized in a line spoken in the film by Martin Luther King, Jr., that “the black domestic, by his dignity and strength of character, is engaged in an act of subversion, perhaps unknowingly.”  It is reported that Spike Lee was originally set to direct the film, but pulled out late in pre-production.  The film lacks the edginess Lee would have brought to it.  As it is, the film is more like a Pat Boone cover of an R&B gem.  The notes are all there, but the funk has been mainstreamed.

The film was obviously Hollywood hot stuff:  it boasts some 41 producers including the heavy hitting Weinstein brothers, and a cast of Oscar winners and wannabes that proves more of a distraction than a contribution (Is that really Robin Williams as Eisenhower? Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan?)  The star power outshines the script, which is loaded with historical sound bites and 60’s era movie clichés, so that the cameos only increase the film’s sense of self-importance.

What saves the film is both the power of the civil rights story itself, and the outstanding performances of Forest Whitaker in the title role, and Oprah Winfrey as his wife.  Both leads will undoubtedly be remembered at Oscar time, although Whitaker’s is the stronger and more deserving performance. Those are both good reasons to put up with the film’s excesses.  Lee Daniels’ The Butler will undoubtedly become a February staple in eleventh-grade American history classes for years to come; however, the better teachers will screen the documentary series Eyes on the Prize, or Lee’s Malcolm X instead of this Forrest Gump meets Driving Miss Daisy mash-up.   2.75/4.0 stars (an extra quarter-point for Whitaker’s performance).