![]() He runs away in his late teens and gets a job as a waiter in a Southern hotel, where his African-American boss tells him not to say anything or appear to be listening to conversations, and not to look any white person in the eye. As a boy, he sees his father shot dead by the young white master, and, in an act of generosity (as it’s presented to him), he is trained as a “house nigger” by the master’s mother (Vanessa Redgrave). This scheme sounds both high-minded and manipulative, but “The Butler,” though certainly high-minded, is a fluent, fast-moving entertainment-an intricate gimmick movie with a heart.Īs “The Butler” tells it, Cecil Gaines was born in the twenties, on a cotton farm in Georgia that was run like a plantation. As Cecil works for one President after another, the filmmakers show us the civil-rights movement as it developed, starting in the nineteen-fifties, through the prism of Gaines’s job and his tumultuous family life they also show us the reluctant but ultimately decisive responses to that movement by the Presidents, who mull over federal intervention in the South as Cecil brings them coffee and sandwiches. In the movie, he is known as Cecil Gaines, and his tenure begins during the Eisenhower Administration (a subdued Robin Williams plays Ike). The movie, which was written by Danny Strong (“Game Change,” for TV) and directed by Lee Daniels (“Precious”), is a highly fictionalized account of the life of Eugene Allen, who served as a butler in the White House during the Administrations of eight Presidents, from Truman to Reagan. ![]() ![]() He’s a master of such minor-key modes as uncertainty and embarrassment, and he improbably uses those skills to hold together “The Butler,” an ambitious and crowded historical bio-pic. But Whitaker is usually known for his gentleness: he has a silent, vivid watchfulness, broken by a sudden smile or a slight shift in expression as a thought crosses his mind. In “The Last King of Scotland,” Forest Whitaker, a big man, impersonated Idi Amin with bloodshot, drooping eyes, a rib-crushing embrace, and a voice that alternated between a whisper and a frightening roar. Forest Whitaker plays a White House butler in a movie directed by Lee Daniels.
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