The Butler
- Director: Lee Daniels
- Writer: Danny Strong
- Producer: Lee Daniels / Cassian Elwes / Buddy Patrick / Laura Ziskin
- Studio: The Weinstein Company
- Stars: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lenny Kravitz, Vanessa Redgrave, Terrence Howard, Robin Williams, James Marsden, Liev Schreiber, John Cusack, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Minka Kelly
- Length: 132 min
- Genre: Drama
- Rating: PG-13
- My Rating: ***.5
- Oscar Nominations: N/A
- Nightbird Nominations: N/A, but a Supporting Actress nod for Winfrey is definite
The lone checkpoint that all of The Butler‘s reviews have in common is a tendency to point out that it feels like “Harvey Weinstein’s answer to The Help,” or that it somehow “continues on in the grand tradition of The Help.” I do not understand how anyone could make even the slightest of connections between these two films.
The Help was a sterile, bastardized depiction of race relations in the 1960s, a film that lost its credibility and impact through studio-manufactured gloss and an inability to stretch beyond the intellectual limitations of a coffee-table book. The Butler should not be subjected to such a comparison.
There has been much discussion involving the film’s title. What happened, in a nutshell, is that Warner Bros. discovered in their vaults an old negative for a 1916 short film entitled The Butler. After some research, they discovered that they still owned the film’s copyright, and consequently, that of its title. They took The Weinstein Co. (distributor of the new Butler) to court, whereupon the latter was forced to make a title change, hence director Lee Daniels’ above-the-title credit.
Critics have also been quick to point out that, despite receiving higher billing than the movie itself, this is Lee Daniels’ least “Lee Daniels’-like” film. It is extremely reserved, featuring very few histrionic beats, and none of the occasional moments of pointless absurdity that one has grown to expect from him (for example, The Paperboy is remembered more for a scene in which Nicole Kidman relieves herself on Zac Efron than for anything else), and while there is a fair amount of stunt-casting (another trademark of his oeuvre), it all works unbelievably well.
Daniels instinctively knows that the parts with which he assembles his films (although some of them may seem ridiculous to us laymen) will eventually work together effectively. He somehow knew that Vanessa Redgrave could play a southerner with a British accent and still remain totally convincing; he knew that he could de-glamourize Mariah Carey and have her play a field worker (or for that matter, a social worker in Precious) without audience members giggling because they spotted a pop star in a serious movie; and he knew that he could coax a phenomenal performance out of Oprah Winfrey that would leave behind her television persona and become distilled into the life-force of a supportive, but woefully unhappy wife and mother.
In this respect, Lee Daniels deserves to have his name above the title. His instincts not only shape the episodic screenplay into something grander, but they also provide something that The Help was greatly lacking in: authenticity.
Authenticity in film does not necessitate a presence of truth, but instead the illusion of truth, for film is nothing if not subjective. What Daniels brings to The Butler is the strong illusion of truth, even when what appears on the screen is not always plausible.
If I sound like I’m having trouble committing myself to one opinion on The Butler, it’s because I am. While it has an episodic screenplay that often feels better suited to a Movie-of-the-Week, that script is perfectly interpreted through Lee Daniels’ masterful touch and a gallery of terrific actors. I am not sure that I could call this a great film, but I do know that it is certainly much better than The Help. If for this only, The Butler should be watched and appreciated for what it gets right, and forgiven for its missteps.
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