In 2010, Eugene Allen, an extraordinary historical figure, passed away. From 1952 to 1986, this African-American domestic worked in the White House, serving eight presidents during a tenure that overlapped with the American Civil Rights movement. After the Washington Post profiled Allen in 2008, screenwriter Danny Strong and director Lee Daniels saw the opportunity in Allen’s decidedly cinematic life.
Lee Daniel’s recent movie “The Butler” is the result.
“The Butler” tells the story of Cecil Gaines, a fictionalized version of Allen played by Forest Whitaker, as he humbly navigates through contemporary history and tries to secure a comfortable life for his wife, Gloria — played by Oprah Winfrey — and their two children, David and Elijah. The early parts of the film features excellent performances, particularly by Whitaker, that focus directly on the Gaines family with a commendable realism.
Yet the film suffers the closer it comes to portraying actual history. Rather than guiding us believably through the tumult of Cecil’s tenure, the filmmakers fashion him as an insider’s Forrest Gump. He is not merely present as President Eisenhower sends federal troops to Little Rock or as President Kennedy reacts to the Freedom Riders’ bus-burning. His mere presence, it is implied, decisively causes these chief executives to act as they did.
But one Gump could have fit comfortably in this narrative; after all, Cecil was technically in the White House during these events. Instead, we get another, in the form of Cecil’s son David. From a young age, David rejects his father’s accommodationism and fully joins the Civil Rights movement. Occasionally, this contrast produces some good cinema, such as when Gaines serves a table of notables at the White House while racists torment David at a diner-counter for refusing to sit in the “colored” section.
More often, however, David’s arc is just plain incredible: he was not only on the burned Freedom Rider bus, but he also fraternizes with Martin Luther King Jr. just before his assassination, and abandons the Black Panther Party just before Nixon orders its razing. The accumulation of historical convenience stretches credulity. That Eugene Allen himself had only one son, a Vietnam soldier who –– unlike his big-screen counterpart –– survived the war further degrades this alteration; Hollywood clichés demand that a film even nominally about Vietnam must feature at least one major character death because of it, and “The Butler” dutifully obeys.
Other brushes with history are equally troubling. The presidents themselves are a mixed bag: James Marsden and Liev Schreiber are acceptable as JFK and LBJ, respectively, but the boyish-faced John Cusack never convinces as Nixon, and Robin Williams fails to distinguish himself sufficiently enough as Eisenhower to make us forget that he is Robin Williams. Alan Rickman is surprisingly good as Ronald Reagan, but the fictions concocted by the filmmakers about our 43rd president detract from this. We see Reagan resolutely and inexplicably resolve, for example, to veto sanctions on the then-apartheid South African regime, despite adviser urging that he “be on the right side of history on the racial issue,” then absurdly wonder to Cecil: “The whole civil-rights thing — sometimes I think I’m just wrong.”
Communism, a legitimate threat to South Africa — and everywhere else — at the time, receives hardly any mention, either in this part of the movie or anywhere else. The only line the primary international issue of the 20th century’s second half receives comes from King, who tells David that “at least the Viet Cong aren’t calling us n*ggers:” more or less pure moral relativism. With correct context absent, we are supposed to conclude that Cecil — again unlike his true counterpart — resigns because of Reagan’s quasi-racism.
This part of the denouement also makes little narrative sense. For just as David, who rejects ‘the system’ for the whole film until near the end, decides to start working within it, Cecil, our window into that system, rejects it. What message ought one to take from that switch? The film is not sure. But it becomes surer of itself near the end, as an elderly Cecil and Gloria happily watch, as Allen also did, Barack Obama campaign and eventually become president.
Whatever one thinks of Obama’s presidency, it remains a tremendous milestone for race relations in this country, and the film rightly dwells on it. Sadly, much of the rest of the film fails to convey the gravity of what led to that event meaningfully or realistically enough to earn that climax. Ultimately, “The Butler” has honorable intentions and some good performances, but suffers from ideology and lazy plotting that cheapen the 20th century African-American experience without providing the honest narrative it deserves.
