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| Anne Marie Fox/Weistein Company |
The Butler debuted August 16tth and immediately claimed the number one spot at the box office. The movie chronicles the life of Cecil Daniels, born to a cotton picker in the south, who eventually serves as a White House butler for 34 years through eight administrations. Forest Whitaker as Cecil marries Gloria, portrayed by Oprah Winfrey, and has two sons. Both actors deserve Oscar nominations.
The all-star cast includes Cuba Gooding-too long absent from the big screen, Lenny Kravitz, Terrence Howard, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams, Liev Schreiber, John Cusack, and many others, all of whom made the film a stand-out. Schreiber had a scene showing his character Lyndon Johnson conducting a meeting while sitting on the toilet as Gaines patiently waits for the others to leave so he can serve Johnson's needs. Crass though it might seem, Johnson did that frequently.
David Oyelowo, as Gaines' older son Louis, seethes at the racial divide in America and chooses an activist's path that leads him the Freedom Riders and the Black Panthers after meeting Carol (YaYa Da Costa) at Fisk University and discovering her passion to change the status quo for Blacks. Da Costa reminded this blogger of Angela Davis, well-known for her radical stance in the Civil Rights Movement, in both appearance and determination. Carol's choice to remain with the Black Panthers when they announce a "kill or be killed" stance eventually splits the pair. By then, the rift between Gaines and his son seems irreparable for several reasons.
Director Lee Daniels expertly juxtaposes the genteel existence of the presidents and the butlers who serve them, much on the order of Upstairs, Downstairs and Backstairs at the White House. The scenes of activists occupying a whites-only area at a lunch counter in Nashville and a Freedom Riders bus blown up in Mississippi brought back horrific memories of that period for this blogger. When James Marsden as President John F. Kennedy tells Gaines that watching those atrocities unfold had changed his brother Bobby's heart as well as his own, it reveals the difficulty someone has in understanding the agony of discrimination without a visceral experience to drive it home.
The Butler is a must-see movie on many levels. Those who didn't witness the Civil Rights Movement first-hand will perhaps better understand life during the period with which the movie dealt. Those who saw it unfold will benefit from a refresher course of the determination shown by civil rights activists in the pursuit of justice for all under the United States Constitution. History comes alive in this movie.
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