The Butler

This film was great; it really was.
The beginning part was hard to watch, with the young master (Alex Pettyfer) taking the main character's mother, Hattie Pearl (Mariah Carey, yes, a surprise to me and probably everyone else) into the barn because, he claimed, he needed her help with something. Of course, he took advantage of her while the other workers in the cotton field just heard and did nothing. They couldn't do anything. When Hattie returns, Cecil's father just stares him down but master shoots him anyway. The mistress of the land (Vanessa Redgrave) is a tough person to figure out. She shows no sympathy when the father is killed, just ordering the others to instantly bury him, but she takes pity, if that is the right word, on the young Cecil and takes him in the house to be a house n-----. That means serving the very man who killed his father on a daily basis, but it teaches him a skill that could mean a way out.
Cecil leaves and fortunately, another negro, takes pity on him and teaches him the waiter trade which leads him to a job at a hotel in Washington D.C.
Cecil (now the brilliant Forest Whitaker) lives in Washington, with a wife, Gloria (Oprah Winfrey, quite good) and two sons, who are quite different from one another. Then, the White House calls Cecil and is offered a job. Naturally, he must be seen and not heard, without putting his personal opinions on the line and out there in the open. This becomes more difficult especially since elder son, Louis (David Oyelowo, aging from a teenager to middle-aged adult) joins the Freedom Riders, getting arrested and putting himself in harms way more than enough. Eventually, Louis and his girlfriend, Carol (Yaya DaCosta) join the Black Panther movement, but he leaves because he is not prepared to kill anyone.
Tons of action occur throughout the two-plus hour film, ranging from practicing for abuse they will and do receive from white customers at a restaurant for a sit-in, to President Johnson (Liev Schreiber) having problems in the bathroom, in a funny scene. Eventually, younger son (the underused Elijah Kelley) goes off to Vietnam where he is killed. He was the favored son, who didn't disagree with his parents.
It isn't until the eighties, when Reagan (Alan Rickman, still saying his lines too slowly) refuses to aid in the uprising in South Africa, where Blacks still aren't equal. He has had enough and quits his job, rekindles a relationship with the surviving Louis, a politician now. He even lives to see Obama be elected president, something he never believed he would see.
Each character is pretty complex, with Whitaker's face showing a million emotions even though he says nothing and him barely moving a muscle. Winfrey is also great as the alcoholic, neglected wife, who even takes to having an affair with the womanizing neighbor, Howard (Terrance Howard), but breaks it off. We assume that Cecil never learned of it, which is probably for the better. There is also the interesting conversation that the rebellious Louis has with his parents, criticizing the great Sidney Poitier's acting, bringing up several good points.
I did have problems with the film, mainly every time a president asked Cecil how his family lived or something of that nature, he would then enact a new piece of legislation or make a move that would help the African Americans achieve better rights. That just seemed manipulated to me. Also, Cecil's fellow butlers, James (Lenny Kravitz) and Carter (Cuba Gooding, Jr) were in the business just as long as he was and seemed to be just as loyal, so why did Cecil get the film and they didn't? My sister said it was because Cecil's sons were more interesting, though most of that was created solely for the film. I opted to overlook the somewhat poor casting of Robin Williams as Eisenhower and John Cusack as the lying Richard Nixon, though Jane Fonda was great in her brief cameo of Nancy Reagan. I was also hoping that when Cecil and Gloria were invited to the White House for a state dinner that that scene would have been more meaningful but Cecil believes that they were there as figures only, but Gloria finally got her trip to the White House.
Fortunately, the dialogue is authentic and the performances are brilliant, certainly some of the best I've seen this year. Winfrey was great though the film belonged, rightly, to Whitaker, handing a difficult role with great care. Cecil is not a saint, valuing his work above most, only to nearly have everything fall down around him. Grade: A-