MOVIE REVIEW: THE BUTLER
Director: Lee Daniels
Genre: Biography, Drama
Cast: Forest Whitaker (Cecil Gaines), Oprah Whinfrey (Gloria Gaines), David Oyelowo (Louis Gaines), Cuba Gooding Jr, Jane Fonda, Terrence Howard, Robin Williams, James Marsden and etc.
The Butler is one of the movies that will take your breath away, and will not let you go once the movie ends. We all know how Lee Daniels(The Paperboy, Precious) talented is. He knows exactly how to manage with the biggest stars of Hollywood starting with Forest Whitaker and finishing with Vanessa Redgrave. If I start talk about each and every star that has been appear in the movie, I will never be able to finish my writing. That`s why I better go right to my point, telling you what you have to know about the movie, about negative or positive sides.
The film starts with an old Cecil Gaines who sits in the hall of the White House, looking around with sad but at the same time with the face of the man who went through so much troubles, and struggles to be there where he is right now – at the White House. And then, the next scene is takes us back to Cecil childhood when his father got killed for defending his wife. And going thru all this troubles that he had had, he became very smart, polite, and patience person that allow him to be The Butler in the White House.
Lee Daniels did an excellent job directing the movie “The Paperboy” with the biggest stars of Hollywood. And it was really hard to imagine how two absolutely different movies could be directed with the same person – Lee Daniels.
But let`s talk about the person who you might never heard of, but now you will talk only about him Cecil Gaines whose real name was Eugene Allen, a butler at the White House for 34 years and through 8 administrations. The Butler perfectly shows where America was before and where is it right now. Daniles tried to shows all pain and struggles of the non-white people that could easily get killed right on the street and never get arrested by the police. It is hard to imagine the real pain that had suffered Eugene in real life. Only those who has such experience can understand that. To me, sometimes it was really hard to hold my tears from going down, because the pain that I felt for those people was much stronger that desire holding my tears back.
But for now, I am going to leave you to judge the movie. As I mentioned above, there were so many big names in The Butler, that it not that easy to talk about all of them. But I would like to say a few words about Forest Whitaker (Platoon, The Last King of Scotland, The Color of Money), an Oscar winner actor has all possible awards, that I may not have a time to mention all of them. There is only one tip I would suggest to follow if you want to be a great actor: – be like Forest Whitaker. Forest Whitaker has delivered unforgettable performance that can guarantee him to be in the short list of AMPAS.
Even though, Forest has been good enough in this movie does not mean that he is only the one who should get all credits. Oprah Whinfrey as Gloria Gaines an alcoholic wife of Cecil delivered an outstanding performance that proof to all of us that if she is not making many movies as do the rest of Hollywood it does mean that she has lost an ability to be an excellent actress. Her ability to feel the character, that person that she need to pretend is so good that I would not imagine Gloria in any other way.