The film was theatrically released by the Weinstein Company on August 16, 2013, to mostly positive reviews from critics, with many praising the cast but criticizing the historical accuracy.[11][12] The film was a commercial success, grossing over $177 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million.[13]
Plot
In 2009, an elderly Cecil Gaines recounts his life story while waiting at the White House to meet the newly inaugurated president.
Born and raised on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia to sharecroppers, in 1926 when he was seven, the owner rapes his mother Hattie; his father, Earl, confronts him and is killed. Cecil is taken in by the estate's caretaker, who trains him to be a house servant.
In 1937, at 18, Cecil leaves the plantation. Desperately hungry, he breaks into a hotel pastry shop. The elderly master-servant Maynard takes pity on him and gives him a job. Cecil learns advanced serving and interpersonal skills from Maynard, who later recommends Cecil for a position in a Washington, D.C., hotel. While working there, Cecil meets and marries Gloria, and the couple have two sons: Louis and Charlie.
In the late 1960s, after civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Louis tells his family that he has joined the Black Panthers. Cecil orders Louis and his girlfriend to leave his house. Louis is again arrested. Cecil becomes aware of President Richard Nixon's plans to suppress the Black Panthers.
Charlie confides to Louis that he plans to join the war in Vietnam. After enlisting, he is killed and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. When the Black Panthers resort to violence, Louis leaves the organization and returns to college, earning his master's degree in political science and eventually running for a seat in Congress, although Cecil continues to hold resentment against him.
Cecil repeatedly approaches his supervisor at the White House over the unequal pay and career advancement provided to the black White House staff. With President Ronald Reagan's support, Cecil prevails, his reputation growing to the point that he and his wife are invited by the Reagans to be guests at a state dinner. Cecil becomes uncomfortable with the class divisions in the White House. After witnessing Reagan's refusal to support economic sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, he resigns.
Gloria encourages Cecil to mend his relationship with Louis. Realizing his son's actions are heroic, he joins him at a protest against South African apartheid; they are arrested and jailed together.
In 2008, Gloria dies shortly before Barack Obamais elected as the nation's first black president. Two months, two weeks and one day later, Cecil prepares to meet the newly inaugurated President, wearing the articles he received from Kennedy and Johnson. White House Chief Usher Stephen W. Rochon approaches him, telling him the president is ready and preparing to show him the way to the Oval Office. Cecil tells him that he knows the way and walks down the hall to the office.
Danny Strong's screenplay is inspired by Wil Haygood's Washington Post article "A Butler Well Served by This Election".[26][27] The project received initial backing in early 2011, when producers Laura Ziskin and Pam Williams approached Sheila Johnson for help in financing the film. After reading Danny Strong's screenplay, Johnson pitched in her own $2.7 million before bringing in several African-American investors. However, Ziskin died from cancer in June 2011. This left director Daniels and producing partner Hilary Shor to look for further producers on their own. They started with Cassian Elwes, with whom they were working on The Paperboy. Elwes joined the list of producers, and started raising funding for the film. In spring 2012, AI Film, a British financing and production company, added a $6 million guarantee against foreign pre-sales. Finally the film raised its needed $30 million budget through 41 producers and executive producers, including Earl W. Stafford, Harry I. Martin Jr., Brett Johnson, Michael Finley, and Buddy Patrick. Thereafter, as film production started Weinstein Co. picked up U.S. distribution rights for the film. David Glasser, Weinstein Co. COO, called fund raising as an independent film, "a story that's a movie within itself".[3]
The film's title was up for a possible rename due to a Motion Picture Association claim from Warner Bros., which had inherited from the defunct Lubin Company a now-lost 1916 silent short film with the same name.[9][30] The case was subsequently resolved with the MPAA granting The Weinstein Company permission to add Lee Daniels in front of the title, under the condition that his name was "75% the size of The Butler".[31] On July 23, 2013, the distributor unveiled a revised poster, displaying the title as Lee Daniels' The Butler.[32]
Filming
Principal photography started in June 2012 in New Orleans. Interior White House scenes were shot at Second Line Stages. Production was originally scheduled to wrap in early August 2012 but was delayed by the impact of Hurricane Isaac.[33]
Reception
Box office
In its opening weekend, the film debuted in first place with $24.6 million.[34][35] The film topped the North American box office in its first three consecutive weeks.[36][37] The film has grossed $116.6 million in Canada and the United States, it earned $60.7 million elsewhere, for a total of $177.3 million.[2]
Critical response
The Butler received generally positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 72% rating based on 201 reviews with an average score of 6.60/10. The site's consensus says, "Gut-wrenching and emotionally affecting, Lee Daniels' The Butler overcomes an uneven narrative thanks to strong performances from an all-star cast."[38] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 65 based on 47 reviews, indicating "generally positive reviews".[39] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A" on scale of A to F.[40]
Todd McCarthy praised the film saying, "Even with all contrivances and obvious point-making and familiar historical signposting, Daniels' The Butler is always engaging, often entertaining and certainly never dull."[41]Richard Roeper lauded the film's casting in particular, remarking that "Forest Whitaker gives the performance of his career".[42]Rolling Stone also spoke highly of Whitaker writing that his "reflective, powerfully understated performance...fills this flawed film with potency and purpose".[21]
Variety wrote that "Daniels develops a strong sense of the inner complexities and contradictions of the civil-rights landscape".[43]USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and noted that "It's inspiring and filled with fine performances, but the insistently swelling musical score and melodramatic moments seem calculated and undercut a powerful story".[44] Miles Davis of the New York Tribune gave the film a negative review, claiming the film to be "Oscar bait", a cliche film designed to attract Oscar nominations.[45]
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times was more negative: "An ambitious and overdue attempt to create a Hollywood-style epic around the experience of black Americans in general and the civil rights movement in particular, it undercuts itself by hitting its points squarely on the nose with a 9-pound hammer."[46] Several critics compared the film's historical anecdotes and sentimentality to Forrest Gump.[47][48][49][50]
President Barack Obama said, "I teared up thinking about not just the butlers who worked here in the White House, but an entire generation of people who were talented and skilled. But because of Jim Crow and because of discrimination, there was only so far they could go."[51]
Accolades
List of awards and nominations received by The Butler
Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Forest Whitaker, Robin Williams, and Oprah Winfrey
Regarding historical accuracy, Eliana Dockterman wrote in Time: "Allen was born on a Virginia plantation in 1919, not in Georgia.... In the movie, Cecil Gaines grows up on a cotton field in Macon, where his family comes into conflict with the white farmers for whom they work. What befalls his parents on the cotton field was added for dramatic effect.... Though tension between father and son over civil rights issues fuels most of the drama in the film, [Eugene Allen's son] Charles Allen was not the radical political activist that Gaines's son is in the movie."[54]
Particular criticism has been directed at the film's accuracy in portraying President Ronald Reagan. While Alan Rickman's performance generated positive reviews, conservative activists criticized the director and screenwriters of the film for depicting Reagan as indifferent to civil rights and his reluctance to associate with the White House's black employees during his presidency. According to Michael Reagan, the former president's son and a conservative activist, "The real story of the White House butler doesn't imply racism at all. It's simply Hollywood liberals wanting to believe something about my father that was never there."[55][56]
Paul Kengor, one of President Reagan's biographers, also attacked the film, saying, "I've talked to many White House staff, cooks, housekeepers, doctors, and Secret Service over the years. They are universal in their love of Ronald Reagan." In regard to the president's initial opposition to sanctions against apartheid in South Africa, Kengor said, "Ronald Reagan was appalled by apartheid, but also wanted to ensure that if the apartheid regime collapsed in South Africa that it wasn't replaced by a Marxist-totalitarian regime allied with Moscow and Cuba that would take the South African people down the same road as Ethiopia, Mozambique, and, yes, Cuba. In the immediate years before Reagan became president, 11 countries from the Third World, from Asia to Africa to Latin America, went Communist. It was devastating. If the film refuses to deal with this issue with the necessary balance, it shouldn't deal with it at all."[57]
The The (disambiguation) Ṭhē Meanings of minor planet names: 5001–6000 The Mamas & the Papas The The The Return of the King The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord The Good, the Bad & the Queen The Fellowship of the Ring The Good, the Bad and the Ugly The Good, the Bad, the Weird The Beatles Play the Residents and the Residents Play the Beatles The Palace of the King of the Birds The Wicked + The Divine The Lord of the Rings The Brave and the Bold The House of the Dead The O2 The Sims …
The Taming of the Shrew The Guide for the Perplexed The Indian in the Cupboard The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Supremes The Letter for the King The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers The Abandonment of the Jews The Best of The Stylistics The War of the Worlds The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees The Good, the Bad & the Live The Sheep and the Goats The Bold and the Beautiful The Medium Is the Massage The Keys to the Kingdom The Independent The Passion of the Christ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe The Marys of the Empire The House of the Dead: Overkill The Animatrix The End Is the Beginning Is the End The N The Bahamas The Keltiad The Name of the Rose The Beatles The Pines & the Devil The Planets The Band The Supersizers... The Flintstones The Lord of the Rings (film series) The Waterboys The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe The House of the Dead III The Tales of Beedle the Bard The Tortoise and the Hare The Who Feeding the multitude The Aquabats The Picts and the Martyrs The Seekers The Lion, the Fox & the Eagle The Bear and the Travelers The WB The Girl & The Fig Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videoga