The Butler Starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo Director: Lee Daniels Category: IIB Rating: 3.5/5 The Butler is a story of an African-American employee in the White House that becomes an inspiring parable about the struggle of blacks, now that an African-American family lives there. The butler in question is Eugene Allen (renamed Cecil Gaines for the film), who served eight presidents. Born on a Georgia cotton farm in 1919, he witnesses a racist man abusing his mother and killing his father. Shortly afterwards, the plantation's matron (Vanessa Redgrave) takes pity on him and moves the young boy indoors, teaching him the finer ways of domestic servitude. As he grows up, this training leads him to work in big city hotels and, eventually, the Oval Office. The setting offers an amusing but distracting array of presidential cameos, starting with Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower, followed by John Cusack as a shifty Richard Nixon, James Marsden as a bland John F. Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson, and, most amusingly, Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Ronald and Nancy Reagan. As a butler, Gaines was an inadvertent witness to moments that defined history, although he wasn't allowed to participate in them. As part of his job description, he is expected to provide an invisible service and not look, listen or react. "The room should feel empty when you're in it," is how one of his superiors explains his job to him. It's an interesting variation on seminal African-American novelist Ralph Ellison's ideas in Invisible Man . Yet Whitaker is all about physical presence. He bottles the character's dignity and resentment into a stilled body. Even at home, with alcoholic wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and their two sons, he's too invested in making life better for them to have any thoughts about the collective struggle. The film's dramatic linchpin is the growing gap between father and older son Louis (David Oyelowo), who insists on more action and less subservience. This dynamic is eloquently presented in a scene in which Cecil is serving a formal White House dinner, while his son is assaulted as he protests silently at a segregated diner. Director Lee Daniels appreciates the basic dilemma of any movement for justice. Do you work within the system no matter how unfair and rigged it is, or do you try to smash the whole crooked paradigm? But The Butler is not really about politics. It's essentially a family drama about the generation gap between a father and his son. The talents involved have a bit too much reverence for the subject matter, and the film consequently feels self-important. The optimistic ending, which is set around the prelude to the 2008 election, is pure Oscar-baiting, yet when Barack Obama's name appears on campaign T-shirts and in CNN electoral coverage, it makes for an uplifting and triumphant conclusion. It's here that the film leaves history behind to become truly personal. 48hours@scmp.com The Butler opens on January 16
