The Butler

This review may contain spoilers.

This film made me ashamed of the ancestry of modern day white culture, it touched me that deeply. I would personally give this film a 7/10.

The Butler is hard to read, I partly wanted to laugh at the light moments while at others I was confronted with the severity of the ideas within this film. I think the plot was great at keeping the audience invested and had a great pacing throughout. The progression of this film was nothing short of inspiring but also was incredibly confrontational and very eye opening.

I have to say Forest Whitaker in this role of Cecil Gaines was nothing short of inspiring, such a brilliant display of acting prowess. I also never thought I would see such a strong side of acting from Oprah Winfrey, who played Gloria Gaines, showed us the darker conflict within Cecil's life and gave the film it's feeling of reality. David Oyelowo, who played Louis Gaines, was a wonderful character (completely fictitious) who represented the struggle faced by African Americans from the 50s through to modern day in a very thought provoking manner. John Cusack as Richard Nixon was another great casting decision, I was never quite comfortable while he was onscreen which was exactly what the role needed to be. James Marsden as John F. Kennedy was perhaps my favourite onscreen presence; he was a small role but he had so much heart and charisma that I genuinely felt the change in opinion around his presidency which is fairly accurate. I also loved to hate Alan Rickman, because he represented a lot of the modern age views of lingering racism and he played it perfectly; he showed how society deems itself perfectly devoid of racism now while still making racist actions.

There were some downsides to this film. I felt like there were some subplots or plot points that were just plain unnecessary or became a cheap crack at another racial stance where one wasn't needed. I also believe that the Black Panther movement was portrayed awfully, while the look may have been correct it just came across as some weird teenage 70s youth group rather than the racial movement it was.

Terrence Howard was a really weird and unnecessary addition to this film, I forgot about his character quite easily. The same could easily be said for Lenny Kravitz. Yaya Alafia, who played Carol Hammie, was absurd; a cheap love interest who perverted some of the racial movement into a sexualised fantasy. Nelsan Ellis, who played Martin Luther King Jr, was just disappointing; I expected more from an actor playing a role of this scale but it just came off as minor and insignificant.