The Butler

The Butler is a 2013 drama film directed by Lee Daniels and starring Forest Whitaker and
Oprah Winfrey. Based on a true story, Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) worked as a White
House butler from 1952 to 1986. He accompanied eight US presidents and experienced in
the backrooms of power how politics was made.

Cecil, his father and his mother worked on a cotton plantation as slaves in 1926. They lived a
contented life until a white man raped his mother and shot his father. After Cecil’s father died,
the woman he worked for took him in and hired him as a ′′Housenegro′′ (butler). After several
years, Cecil decided to leave Macon, Georgia and his crazy mother, who barely spoke after
his fathers died. After a long job search without success, poverty and hunger he broke into a
hotel and was soothed by a butler. The man has cecil offered a job as a butler after a long
discussion. He became his boss and taught him. After several years, his boss got a job offer
in Washington D.C but turned it down and gave it to Cecil as a new chance in life. He
became a butler in a very large hotel, met his wife and had two sons, Louis and Charlie. He
was hardly interested in american politics, so a rich man talked him up in the white house
and offered him a job in the white house. Cecil meets the presidents in personal, sometimes
intimate situations and learns at close quarters about their political views and actions on the
problem of racial segregation. Cecil serves President Eisenhower while he paints. Vice
President Nixon, during his campaign against the eventual winner Kennedy, asks Cecil and
his colleagues about their political views and desires he promises the butlers the same pay
as for whites. President Kennedy is sprawled on the floor because of his back ailment and
has Cecil help him up. Kennedy then tells Cecil that his son Louis has been arrested sixteen
times. After Kennedy's assassination, his widow Jacqueline gives Cecil a tie of the assassin.
President Reagan finally takes Cecil into his confidence and orders him to deliver private
monetary donations to people in need. Reagan obliges him to keep quiet. In contrast to his
profession, his family life break up. His wife Gloria is temporarily alcoholic and comforts
herself with a man from the neighborhood because Cecil works a lot of overtime at the White
House. His older son, Louis, is far from resigning to his father’s service profession, which he
sees as connected with the oppression of blacks in America. During a dinner with Charlie,
Louis and his girlfriend, it is break up between Louis and his parents. He joined the Black
Panther movement as a radical fighter for the rights of blacks. During demonstrations, he is
repeatedly arrested and thrown into prison. In Alabama, he is caught in a racist ambush on a
Freedom Rider bus. Charlie volunteered to join the army and died as a soldier in the Vietnam
War. Louis later graduated from college and became a candidate for Congress. Cecil and his
wife are invited by Nancy Reagan as guests to a state dinner and sit near the presidential
couple. So cecil became dissatisfied with his life and resigned. On his way home, he passes
the South African embassy and meets his son Louis, who is leading a demonstration against
Reagan's South Africa policy. Louis and Cecil are getting along. Cecil joins the
demonstration and they are arrested together. Shortly before the presidential election, Gloria
dies. Later, President Obama wants to receive the former butler in the White House.

In my view, the film is very interesting. You can learn a lot and take it with you for life. It’s like
a history lesson, but it’s set in a film. It was very touching to me how people had to live in
those days just because of their skin color.

Extra→
1960: Kennedys election
1963: Johnsons election
1969: Nixons election
1986: Reagens election
2008: Obamas election