Lindsey Lowson / 04 May 2025 / Categories: Movie and TV Shows, Movie

THE BUTLER Shows Us Who We Really Are

Two Faces Is Not Emancipation

This movie has been on my radar. Out in 2013 I cannot believe it’s taken me 12 years to see it. That reminds me, of two other films released the same year 12 Years a Slave also on the list, along with Fruitvale Station another shocking true story, in this black history genre.

This is a must watch. Doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from this is everyone’s issue and not just back in 1937 when Cecil Baines (Forrest Whittaker) life began. The story is loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen who worked at the White House for 34 years during the civil rights movement.

2014 was a very tough nomination year with a lot of movies being well received, so inspite of a star studded cast including Robin Williams, Jane Fonda, Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, Cuba Gooding Junior the list goes on The Butler did not secure one Oscar nomination despite grossing $116 million dollars at the box office in the US.

This movie is going to make you feel. It didn’t make me cry. It made me ashamed. It made me angry. It made me frustrated. It made me think about a Martin Luther King quote Barack Obama quoted that stuck with me,

“The arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”

suggesting that progress towards justice, freedom, and equality is inevitable, but it takes a long time. I have never seen a film that represents that level of hope before and why this movie was so special and inspiring even though it makes us look deep inside ourselves to find the ignorance, another thing this movie shows, privilege creates ignorance, pain and endurance creates wisdom.

The reason I think everyone should watch this Lee Daniel’s epic which personally I think is better than “The Help” as it avoids the stereotypes Viola Davies and Octavia Spencer were so heavily and unjustly criticised for later ending up apologising and regretting the roles, for it’s subtle matter of fact story telling.

It’s a historical drama that begins in the cotton fields of the South and ends with the 2008 US presidential election. A story spanning 71 years that takes us through the administrations of Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, brilliantly portrayed by an unrecognisable Alan Rickman interweaving the Civil Rights movement and the work of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

The film is expertly crafted and punctuated with real life footage of the Klu Klux Clan, and the atrocities that happened in Little Rock Arkansas, when 9 African American students attempted to desegregate an high school in 1957 and in Birmingham Alabama where the civil rights campaign of 1963 eventually led to the desegregation of the city and exposed the brutality of law enforcement.

The film is an education in many ways and I imagine that’s why it attracted such a massive ensemble cast of big name box office draw players in effectively cameo roles, like Hattie Pearl played by Mariah Carey, Cecil’s mother and Annabeth Westfall, cotton farm owner played by Vanessa Redgrave who open the film.

Whilst the acting was incredible from everyone and there are a lot of famous names I haven’t mentioned, the stand out performance for me was Oprah Winfrey as Cecil’s wife, Glory.

The subtlety and nuance in her portrayal of a woman navigating the time, dealing with her family, children, a husband working all hours for 40% less money than his white colleagues and a drinking problem.

One of her stand out lines for me “I could care less what happens in that house, I care about what happens in this house.”