![]() As it stands, "Lee Daniels' The Butler" is "Zelig" or " Forrest Gump" without the laughs - at least without the intentional laughs. Here's the irony: A simple, honest telling of Allen's life would have had plenty to say about race and history, just as a matter of course and it might have been the story of a man, too. Whatever is going on, the son is involved, and so, whether at home or on the job, Cecil can't get away from the story of his people. Martin Luther King, then a Black Panther, then a congressional candidate and then an antiapartheid activist. To that end, Strong gives the butler a son who is, at first, a Freedom Rider, then an aide to Dr. The screenplay, written by Danny Strong, cuts out Truman and changes Allen's name in order to turn his story into one about race relations in America, from midcentury through the election of Barack Obama. The film is based on the life of Eugene Allen, an African American man from the Deep South who worked in the White House from the last year of the Truman administration until Ronald Reagan's second term. He just stands there and watches, and there are only so many ways even a great actor like Forest Whitaker can make bewildered or stricken silence interesting. Cecil is a passive man with no power - not even the power to influence or teach by example. But the movie's main challenge is a simple one: It is very difficult, next to impossible, to build a movie around an inert, inactive character. "The Butler" is a nice idea for a movie, but has a mostly silly script and some of the craziest and most laughable casting imaginable. And so it goes, all the way up to Ronald Reagan, who has a lot on his plate, and yet somehow always happens to be talking about apartheid and South Africa whenever Cecil walks in. A few years after that, Richard Nixon is in office, fretting with Bob Haldeman over the Black Panthers. ![]() A year later, he can't walk into the room without LBJ talking about the civil rights bill. He brings coffee to JFK, just as the president is sitting in front of the TV, watching black protesters getting manhandled by the police in the South. This pattern continues throughout Cecil's White House career. In "Lee Daniels' The Butler," Cecil Gaines gets his dream job, working at the White House, and the very first time he walks into the Oval Office, he finds President Dwight Eisenhower in a deep discussion over how to enforce Brown vs. Starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey and David Oyelowo.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |