Review of The Butler (2013) by Dawdlingpoet — 20 Nov 2021

I found this film relatively shocking in parts, although not for the reason you may be expecting. It doesn't hold back as far as racial slurs and the like are concerned, even though most of the film shows Cecil in very upper class surroundings. One scene quite early on started with another character talking very sexually explicitly, which took me aback. Its certainly fair to say that characters are more informal when in their working quarters, compared to when their anywhere near whats referred to as 'the white man' and understandably so, I suppose, although I felt sad from early on at how marginalised Cecil was treated, both by specific personal acts and by society in general, i.e. the wider scope. This film does well at handling serious subjects, coming across as quite sad of course, moving and thoughtful. However, I did feel that perhaps the musical score could have been toned down ever so slightly, as it did feel a little 'pushy' and typical Hollywood style fare, which is a shame as I feel it slightly cheapened what is a film about important issues and a depiction of one remarkable mans life.

I thought the film was well cast, featuring a range of well known and respected actors. Forest Whitaker plays the main character, Cecil and I felt he did well at showing himself to be potentially vulnerable, yet a stalwort, a gradually more respected member of the White House staff. I found myself respecting his workmanship and wondering what it must have been like to live with the prejudice around in the decades the film covers. Other cast members include Vanessa Redgrave, who plays Annabeth Westfall, David Oyelowo who plays Louis Gaines and Oprah Winfrey, who plays Gloria Gaines and seemed surprisingly understated as a wife and mother, who seemed to keep to herself. Other cast members include Cuba Gooding Jnr who plays Carter Wilson, a somewhat outspoken fellow butler, David Banner as Earl Gaines, Alex Pettyfer as Thomas Westfall and Mariah Carey (yes, the singer) as Hattie Pearl. The late Robin Williams has a relatively short time on screen, playing President Eisenhower - he seemed quite well fitted to the role, although that may sound hard to believe but I felt so. Also, John Cusak plays Richard Nixon, although I felt his performance to be less memorable.

Music wise, putting aside the sacharrine sweet variety, there are some nice, classy jazz pieces played in other scenes, presumably music featuring black vocalists. Some had a bit of sorrow to them, while others were more upbeat.

I did find some of the scenes quite upsetting, due to both how realistic and how sudden the events seemed to take place. I was aware of the civil rights movement and I knew roughly how badly non-whites were treated back when but it was still disturbing to see the level of hatred, the blatant disregard, the lack of legal rights/representation and so on. I thought it was a film that did well to make me wonder what it must have genuinely been like to experience the obvious discrimination that was apparently allowed, commonplace at the time.

Content wise, as I say this film features strong language, obviously including racial slurs and the like, so that includes discriminatory and racially offensive language. It also contains sex references and scenes of violence, including bloody violence and (potentially) frightening scenes of torture. The film is quite sombre in tone throughout and there is what I presume to be library news footage of events relating to the civil rights movement of the 1950s & 1960s, which could be frightening to, especially younger, people. I was slightly surprised to see that the film carries a 12 rating, as I felt it may be more likely to be rated 15 due to one or two sex references present.

It is a slightly long film, with a running time of two hours and twelve minutes, although the plot covers (literally) quite some time, multiple decades, so its understandable that it had to be a fair length, in order to cover the various administrations he served under. I didn't feel as if it became especially stale, bland or dull at any specific time though.

I would definitely recommend this film as I feel it was well cast, relatively moving and thoughtful/thought provoking and it was also sad and frightening, sombre, sobre but overall a very high quality watch.