Eugene Allen’s story is made for the movies. A man who worked at the White House for over thirty years, he interacted with a succession of Presidents as he rose to the rank of Maitre d’Hotel, retiring during the Reagan Administration. This is how Mr. Allen’s life was described in a Washington Post article written just as President Obama was about to win his first election. It’s a fascinating idea, that a black man could bear witness to the inner turmoil of so many powerful white men as racial tensions rose and fell through the 20th century. Like I said, it’s made for the movies.
In Danny Strong’s adaptation of Mr. Allen’s life, Eugene becomes Cecil Gaines. The basic narrative is essentially kept intact: Cecil gets hired as a White House butler and does indeed remain in service until partway through the Reagan Administration. Through his eyes, and those of his fellow butlers, we meet a succession of Presidents and First Ladies.
The film’s structure follows a simple formula: racial events happen on the streets, the butlers watch news of the events on the television in their workspace, then serve the President of the day, who is also reacting to the same TV footage. A clever idea: we watch the butlers watching the Presidents watching the news… in a series of layers of perspective serving as the film’s center, and tidily introducing the notion that even the President is small when compared to the power of the common man and woman (something the people of Egypt know very well right now). Unfortunately, the actors playing various Presidents and First Ladies aren’t given time to do much more than mimic their well-known mannerisms and perceived character traits. So John Cusack is instantly seedy when he first appears as an as-yet-unelected Richard Nixon. James Marsden is all smiles and charm as John F. Kennedy, etc.
It is an effective way to make audience members comfortable with the subject matter, but also the first way that Danny Strong turns Eugene Allen’s life into a dry history lesson.
The second way involves how Strong and Daniels tackle history itself. Strong gives Cecil a son named Louis who grows up and is drawn to the emerging underground racial-justice movements. He perceives his father as a “house nigger,” seeing the job of White House butler as completely opposite to the concept of black civil rights. Louis then moves through the significant moments in America’s civil rights history in a Forrest Gump-style plot, participating in sit-ins at diners, the Freedom Rides, the fight for voter registration, the rise of the Black Panthers. Louis provides Lee Daniels with a handy way to recreate historical events and a narrative device to link them to Cecil. But handy isn’t always synonymous with good.