Here's my two word review of Lee Daniels' The Butler: See it.
I'm not an actor, but I love the craft. It's a rare pleasure to watch a professional like Lawrence Olivier, who could spin a bit of gold out of the crappiest writing. Maybe that's what I love. As a writer, I can watch a great actor forgive poor writing. Then there's the physical magic like the woman with a thousand voices, Meryl Streep.
Anthony Hopkins blew me away in The Silence of the Lambs because he could play Dr. Hannibal Lecter trussed up like a turkey and behind a mask. Deprived of almost all of the actor's tool kit, he could still scare the hell out of you.
Two years later, in 1993, Hopkins had back-to-back roles as repressed Englishmen that, in lesser hands, could have been virtually identical. Compare C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands and the butler in Remains of the Day. Very different people in the micro while virtually identical in the macro.
Which brings me back to The Butler, connected to Lee Daniels in the credits but totally inhabited by Forest Whitaker.
When you see it, look for two identical scenes.
Played in the same room, with the same lighting, uttering the same lines, to the same actor....but the butler, Cecil Gaines, is no longer the same man. Whitaker is physically limited in the scene. It's a confined space and, the second time, we've heard it before. He has his voice and his facial expressions.
Oscar time, people, Oscar time.
Speaking of which, Oprah Winfrey kills the supporting actor category as well. She doesn't do very many movies, but she does what she does so right.
I'd throw in nominations for make-up, screenplay, Best Director.
I saw an interview of Lee Daniels, wherein he said that they cut off one of the Presidents the real Cecil Gaines served, Truman, because the story was written to follow the arc of the Civil Rights Movement. I can understand that, but Truman did integrate the armed forces by executive order while using the same kind of language LBJ used privately. Ford and Carter are blown by, not even cast but rather represented by stock TV footage.
Those Presidents that are cast give some very talented and sometimes counterintuitive people opportunities they make the most of.
I don't think the film was too long and there was time for a little bit of Give 'Em Hell Harry, but that's just me. The screenplay is nothing for a writer to criticize. This film represents the forces pulling and tugging on the heart of America in the heart of one man, Cecil Gaines, and Forest Whitaker is up to the representation.
See it.