Lee Daniels is a very particular kind of filmmaker. His films are harsh, over the top, in your face, full of atmosphere and energy, not particularly subtle but always powerful, and to date almost always dealing with various aspects of race in the United States.
While I deeply disliked 2001’s Monster’s Ball (too histrionic) which Daniels produced and won Halle Berry an Oscar for Best Actress, missed Precious (2009) an acclaimed film about a sexually abused young black girl (I could not bring myself to watch it due to the subject matter), I did review The Paperboy which came out in 2012 in this column. It was only then that I began to realise that, perhaps, with a little honing Daniels could become a truly great director.
With this year’s The Butler, Daniels has received accolades, but fallen a little short of making a truly great film. It is important to understand when viewing and reviewing cinema that there are many disparate aspects that must gel perfectly in order for an exceptional film to emerge. A great script is usually the place to start and unless the director is truly inept and the casting director a fool, usually a pretty decent film is guaranteed. The Butler is unusual in particular because while it is a more than decent, and in fact rather moving film, it has emerged from a patchy script by Danny Strong with no real coherence -neither historically nor emotionally.
The film is loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen – an African American man who served as a butler at the White House for 34 years. In the film, Allen’s character is renamed Cecil Gaines and is played by the always brilliant Forest Whitaker.
As we move through the film chronologically following Gaines’ journey as a house slave from Macon, Georgia to his move to Washington DC, and his hiring at the White House we are confronted with the knowledge that great acting (based on great casting of course) can truly elevate relatively mediocre writing. While this is Whitaker’s film and carry it he does – he is helped by a string of wonderful performances by Oprah Winfrey as his wife Gloria, Cuba Gooding Jr as Carter Wilson, the head butler at the White House, and of course an array of stalwarts as the various presidents with Robin Williams as Eisenhower, James Marsden as Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Johnson, and Alan Rickman as Reagan.
Gaines’ story is an extraordinary one – a story of stoic hard-work against a backdrop of horrific oppression and terrifying ignorance – it is a shame that this film could neither embrace the gravity of the historical events that Gaines experienced and witnessed firsthand nor fully flesh out the toll it took on his personal life in his choice to dedicate his life to service as a black man at the White House.
Still, The Butler is a fine film – lifted up to a certain level by its actors, the intentions of its director, and with moments of tolerable writing which when wielded by true professionals can cause tears to come to the eyes.