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The Butler (film review) *contains spoilers*


Film: The Butler
Year: 2013
Genre: Biography, Drama
Directed By: Lee Daniels
Starring: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack
About: As Cecil Gaines serves eight presidents during his tenure as a butler at the White House, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and other major events affect this man's life, family, and American society.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUA7rr0bOcc

My Review:
Taking a look at films in which Robin Williams was in and seeing that I had not seen this one before or heard of it I decided to give it a watch while knowing he would only be a small part and I am so glad I did as I did learn a little more about the civil rights movement in America with the black and white people and how far they have really come.

The Butler is about the life of Cecil Gaines and how he went from someone who was working on a cotton plantation and makes his way up to working as a butler within the whitehouse. While this is happening however one of his sons starts standing up for black people and protesting in the south where things for black people are worse than they are in D.C. As well as this it shows how Cecil and the people in which he works for are trying to get change happening from within the whitehouse by asking for a raise and showing how they are getting paid less and not able to get promotions and how far black people are able to come till the first black president.

I thought that this film was brilliant at showing how there was two sides of people fighting for the rights with the more extreme ways of fighting through protests and fighting back against white people which leads to them getting lynched and the more peaceful ways through the way of working and asking for advances and showing that black people are able to be trusted and not all are violent and show that they are not scary. I thought that showing how the black people would work on plantations and become butlers if possible to serve white people was saddening and seeing how far they have come to now having had a black president was emotional and did end up making me cry due to how happy I was about it. Not only this but with Cecil's wife dying just before it happened it was more emotional to see how after losing his family except his son in which he does end up speaking to after years of not talking and starting to protest with him that he was able to see something which was a huge milestone for the black community. This film taught me more about the civil right movement and although some parts was dramatised which is expected with a movie I did find that this was a really good movie which showed how far black people have come.

I did think that the film could have shown more to do with the more iconic people in the civil rights movement instead of only a moment of hearing their names but as it was not primarily based on the more extreme ways of protesting it did not bother me that much.

I would recommend this movie to those who are wanting a biography to watch as well as those who are wanting to watch a movie about civil rights. This is a film which I found very interesting and would definitely see again.

My Rating: 5/5 

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