what the butler didn’t see
by Douglas Messerli
Danny Strong
(screenplay, based on Wil Haygood’s A
Butler Well Served by This Election), Lee Daniels (director) The Butler (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) / 2013
I
must begin by admitting that, after seeing the trailers and reading several
pieces about Lee Daniels’ new film The
Butler, I was reluctant to actually view and/or review this movie. I
attempt not to be terribly influenced by the media before I myself write about
it. But, I do read other reviews, and, in this case, with nearly every talk
show raving about Oprah Winfrey’s performance as Gloria Gaines, the Butler,
Cecil Gaines’ (Forest Whitaker) wife, it was difficult not to make some prejudiced
conclusions about the work.
First of all, I sensed—and I was
correct—that Daniels’ movie was a very old-fashioned Hollywood epic, taking us
by the hand through historical events of American Blacks, from early days of
slavery, through the turmoil of racial protests and riots, major changes in
laws and cultural behavior from the Eisenhower years of the 1950s straight
through to Obama’s election in the first decade of the new millennium. I have
never been a fan of what I might describe as the “Forrest Gump” approach to
history, films that take a chronological view of their heroes’ lives as their
move through political and cultural events. True, Cecil Gaines—a real life White
House butler—worked at the epicenter of these shifts, but clearly, as the film emphasizes,
that does not necessarily mean he was fully or, sometimes, even partially aware
of the significance of the presidential and congressional decisions going on
around him.
As the perfect butler, he, like the butler
in James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day,
is encouraged and advised, as well as self-determined to ignore any knowledge
or even possibility of hearing what is going on around him. Rather, as a
perfect servant, he was there simply to serve, to exquisitely and elegantly foretell
his master’s needs, bringing a drink at the precisely right moment, holding out
silver trays of delicacies while impassively standing at attention without
truly attending to anything but the needs of the president, his staff, and
guests. Like the central character of Ivory’s work, the evil goings-on, even
the significant reforms and break-throughs in governmental policy did not
register on Gaines’ face, and, if this movie is to be believed (and at many
moments, it is not to be believed) failed to register in his inner mind.
Fortunately, Daniels’ film, despite its
structural spine of all those years of standing just a few feet from the most
influential people in American history, focuses not on the White House, but on
Gaines’ home life, and it is in that warm and often troubled world, filled with
the love of Gaines, his wife, and their two boys—at least in the early years—which
spiritually grounds this work and brings the Black characters some dimension.
We can forgive Daniels, I suppose, after thousands and thousands of Hollywood
films who have treated Blacks as mere figureheads, if Daniels treats nearly all
of the white figures of his film in the same manner. Perhaps in an attempt to
seemingly puff-up his cardboard white creations, the director chose some of the
major actors in the business, including Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams (as
Eisenhower), James Mardsen (Kennedy), John Cusak (Nixon), Liev Schreiber
(Johnson), Alan Rickman (Reagan), and Jane Fonda (Mrs. Reagan) to briefly
inhabit these noted beings.
Yet all of them are mere cameos compared to
the far deeper acting skills of Cuba Gooding, Lenny Kravitz, and, in
particular, Whitaker and Winfrey. Since Gaines, however, is not allowed
political reaction—a role, strangely enough, he maintains in his home life—the
writer and director expanded the real Gaines’ only son, into two, the youngest
serving and dying, like millions of other young Black men, in Viet Nam, and the
other becoming involved in nearly every Black political movement of the time,
from the original Woolworth sit-in and the Freedom Bus riders, to involvements
with Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers. In truth, so I have read,
Gaines’ son was not particularly politically involved, but in a movie dedicated
to recounting most of Black history of the period, the writer needed someone to
portray what Cecil and his wife were nearly blind to, encompassing it in the
fine acting of David Oyelowo.
The more involved Cecil’s son Louis is
in political activities, the more the father isolates himself from his son and
the significance of those events, as if facing them might have made it
impossible to look the figures he daily serves in the eyes. And the rupture
between the two seems to be so palpable (if improbable) that you almost feel
the son is justified in describing his hard-working father as an Uncle Tom.
This butler, like Ivory’s British gentleman, at the close of his life seems to
be left with very little, despite daily rubbing elbows with such powerful men
and women: all he has left is a tie Jackie Kennedy has given him upon John
Kennedy’s death, a tie clip tossed to him by Johnson and a couple of other
trinkets. And in his long absences Gloria has turned to alcohol and even,
momentarily, to their male neighbor.
It is not the American situation, but the
South African apartheid, which Reagan refuses to oppose, that finally begins to
insinuate the issues of race into Gaines thoughts (predictably, in the constant
attempt these days to redeem Reagan’s heritage, there was a public outcry
against this film’s portrayal of him, arguing that he did oppose apartheid, but
was afraid South African might turn to Communism—although I see it as part and
parcel of the same issue in Regan’s thinking). And it is only when Gaines actually
is invited by Nancy Reagan to a White House dinner, not as a servant, but as a guest
with his wife, that he, for the first time, really perceives his outsider status.
Somewhat unconvincingly, he finally begins to perceive how, for so many
years, he has been blind to the very history he has witnessed and he becomes
suddenly desperate to recover his inner passion. Resigning from his position,
Gaines finds his son speaking to protestors nearby about apartheid, and willingly
joins him, being arrested along with Louis for his activities.
Now that its central character has
spiritually “come to life,” the film quickly fast forwards to the Obama election,
spinning into a sentimental closing, by showing the agèd couple about to attend
what appears to be an Obama gathering. While awaiting their son, now an elected
official, to take them to the event, Gloria dies, and Louis suddenly is truly
left with the few “remains of the day.” Obama’s election, however, signifies
that despite all of his silent suffering, he—at least as a stand-in for all
Blacks—has now won back his pride. Putting on the few treasures he has from all
those years of quietude, he visits Obama, who has called him to the great white
home in-the-sky, which he knows, perhaps, better than any of its temporary
inhabitants.
In short, although the film often creaks
along in its shopping-list-like recounting of Black history through the years
of this exceptional butler’s employment, it also presents a healthy antidote to
so much of American film-making in its dramatic presentation of a real-life
Black family living out their lives in the nation’s capital. Washington, D.C.,
after all, is a city, one must remember, where the true life-time inhabitants
are not the thousands of whites who temporarily take over its wealthy
neighborhoods as politicians and parties rise to power and fall, but the Blacks
of several lovely middle class and south Anacostia poor neighborhoods. It is
the men and women in power who “come and go,” while the administrators,
butlers, maids, and others stand firm in their grounded roles.
Los Angeles,
September 15, 2013
Reprinted
from Nth Position (October 2013).
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