Lee Daniels’ The Butler (***)

The Butler is “inspired by” the true story of Gene Allen, whose story was briefly told in a Washington Post article written just after the 2008 election won by Barack Obama. Forest Whitaker plays a character called Cecil Gaines, who, like Allen, labors for decades in the White House, where the serving staff, in contrast to everyone else, have traditionally been black. Rather than chronicling the behind-the-scenes challenges of preparing for state dinners and such, Daniels uses this melodrama as a vehicle for exploring the history of the civil rights movement.

Screenwriter Danny Strong penned the contemporary political dramas Recount and Game Change, which managed to create an air of uncertainty about outcomes that, presumably, were known by the audience. In contrast, this movie has the feel of a “great moments in history” docudrama, something to show young folks who might not know much about the Gandhi-inspired nonviolent protests of the early Civil Rights era, or the formation of the Black Panther Party years later. Starting with President Eisenhower (Robin Williams) and proceeding through the next several administrations, Gaines is shown overhearing one meaningful civil-rights related conversation and having one meaningful interaction with several of the Oval Office occupants, all played by name actors who look more like themselves than the leaders they’re playing, except maybe Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan. It is history as inevitable march of progress, though the re-creation of a Woolworth lunch counter sit-in is powerful and upsetting.

In the movie’s telling, the occupation of the title character is not so much a window into an unseen world as a representation of one side of the black experience. For Gaines, it represents the highest position a black man could reasonably hope to obtain and a source of dignity and unalloyed pride; although he recognizes the injustice of the glass ceiling that holds back men of his color, he sees nothing to be gained by the dangerous tactics employed by the Freedom Riders and other activists. The fictional character of his oldest son (David Oyelowo), who becomes one of those activists, is meant to embody the other side of the coin. For the son, a well-paid butler who talks to presidents is still just a modern version of the house slave. Daniels shows this conflict without imposing a strong viewpoint.

Daniels and Strong mix the history with family drama. Oprah Winfrey, in her first major acting role in 15 years, manages to make you forget she’s Oprah in playing Gaines’s wife. It’s a subplot, but the marital scenes are less programmatic than the historical ones. There’s something sad about a life story, because the subject always winds up dead or very old in the end. But, despite that and the discrimination portrayed, the movie is more uplifting than depressing, and, rather than a instructional video, it comes off like a pretty good yarn.

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viewed 10/6/13 1:05 pm at Riverview and posted 10/7/13

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (***1/4)

It was a war begun under a false pretense that lasted way longer, was more deadly, and proved much more costly than predicted. The outcome was not as planned, and that severely impacted the political fortunes of the president who had poured hundreds of thousands of troops into a faraway country. That was Vietnam. People under 45 or 50 won’t remember Daniel Ellsberg, and yet his actions indirectly may have led to the downfall of a president and to one of the most important First Amendment verdicts by the United States Supreme Court.

Ellsberg’s goal was to end the Vietnam War, though. Through his job as a United States foreign policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, he had access to a top-secret report about the history of US involvement in Vietnam. Notably, it was top secret not because it would aid the enemy, but because it would demonstrate the deception of American presidents and the unreality of upbeat assessments about the likelihood of success. After handing the report to The New York Times and other newspapers, Ellsberg earned both a federal indictment and, from President Richard Nixon, the epithet that gives this film its title.

This can be seen as a companion piece to The Fog of War, the Errol Morris documentary that featured Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. McNamara and Ellsberg were both originally supporters of the war (though Ellsberg with more reservations), and both realized that the US was not, as President Lyndon Johnson had told the public, winning the war. But whereas McNamara felt, until decades later, that his duty was to be loyal to his boss, the president, Ellberg came sooner to feel otherwise. Directors Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith allow Ellsberg to narrate his own story, incorporating recent interviews of him and others. Stylistically, the movie is not noteworthy. There is no Philip Glass score a la Morris’s work to lend a sense of urgency, and no fancy graphics. Minor re-enactments of certain scenes are included, and period footage, but mostly the movie is a typical “talking heads” documentary. Almost all of the voices, though, are of those directly involved in leaking the document, in Ellsberg’s life, or in related matters. One academic, people’s historian Howard Zinn, appears, but as one who knew Ellsberg in the 1970s. Nixon is heard on tape, wondering in one excerpt whether dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam might not be a good idea.

While little new information is revealed, this is a very well organized look at a piece of history that any American ought to know.

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viewed 4/14/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/15/10

Frost/Nixon (***1/4)

This movie made me think not of other political movies but of a boxing movie, like Rocky, or the underrated one director Ron Howard did before this, Cinderella Man. They were underdog stories, and this is an underdog story for political junkies. It’s not about Watergate. There’s already movies like All the President’s Men and so forth. You don’t even need to know much about Watergate, or Richard Nixon, to watch the movie, though if you don’t it’ll be less interesting. But what it’s about is how a British journalist/TV host with a lightweight reputation managed to not only snag the fist in-depth interview with a heavyweight but also land some serious blows and, arguably, a knockout punch.

Written by Peter Morgan, who adapted his own play, the film begins with David Frost (Michael Sheen) as the affable but scheming celebrity-interview specialist. (Think of a cross between Barbara Walters and Geraldo Rivera.) But of a playboy too. Frost spends half the movie trying to get enough money to buy Nixon’s cooperation. Even the interview segments are not simply a condensate of the programs that in 1977 drew a record US television audience for an interview, but rather focus on the strategies of the combatants. For Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), it was something like Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope—let Frost use up his time flailing away at him while he calmly, presidentially, rolled with the punches and delivered lengthy, unrevealing answers.

Besides Morgan’s cohesive screenplay, Frost/Nixon is anchored by the powerful performances of both leads. Sheen’s Frost follows the same trajectory as his Tony Blair in The Queen (also written by Morgan); he becomes a more serious person as the film goes on. Langella’s Nixon is masterful; Nixon is a man whose voice and mannerisms are easily parodied, but Langella makes him into a real person, and not simply a villain. While I have no doubt that Nixon deserved to have resigned, I was not without sympathy for him while watching this, even as a rooted for Frost to take him down. Of the supporting actors, Kevin Bacon is most notable as Nixon’s fiercely loyal aide, Jack Brennan.

Everyone knows how this ends. Nixon would spend the next twenty years continuing to attempt to resuscitate his image, Frost was knighted in 1993, and other presidents went on to abuse their power. But the lesson of the movie is, beware the journalist with something to prove. It might’ve helped Sarah Palin to watch Nixon/Frost before she agreed to talk to Katie Couric.

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viewed 12/19/08 at Ritz 5; reviewed 2/14/09

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (***1/4)

The title seems entirely too formal for a movie about a guy who made his name by hanging out with and writing about Hell’s Angels, who had his ashes shot out of a fireworks cannon out, and who, besides reinventing journalism, was best known for his fondness for guns and ability to consume prodigious quantities of alcohol. Other mind-altering substances figure into Thompson’s story. He nearly won a sheriff’s race on a pro-drug platform in his adopted home of Colorado. His reference to Edmund Muskie’s imagined addiction to ibogaine helped derail the senator’s 1972 presidential campaign. His semi-fictionalized road-trip memoir Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas amply catalogues his pharmaceutical adventures along with his take on where the American dream had ended up.

Johnny Depp, the star of the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas film version , narrates this strange man’s life, which ended with his suicide in February 2005. The latter part of the movie is the story of an inevitable decline—while the 1960s and ’70s Thompson created gonzo journalism, the blend of fact, surreality, and opinion that was the antithesis of objectivity, by the Reagan era he had become a man trying too hard to live up to his own image. Still, he wrote prescient commentary on the aftermath of 9/11 as well as a blog for ESPN, and even that last, self-inflicted gunshot can be seen as the man going out on his own terms. Telling his story are usual countercultural suspects like Tom Wolfe and Jann Wenner, whose magazine, Rolling Stone, provided Hunter Thompson’s best-known literary home; political folks like Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, and George McGovern; and friends and family, notably his two wives. It is to Thompson’s credit that his ex seems to recall him mostly fondly, despite his volatile personality and womanizing. McGovern is the effective hero of the 1972 presidential-race account Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. As for Buchanan, I’m no fan of his politics, but you have to like a guy who can recall a political enemy with such apparent nostalgia. (Buchanan’s old boss, Richard Nixon, was Thompson’s foremost object of Loathing.)

Gibney, who shot this simultaneously with his Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, adopts some of Thompson’s visual style, putting quasi-psychedelic visuals behind his talking heads and incorporating footage of Thompson from earlier documentaries as well as clips of Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and 1980’s Where the Buffalo Roam, in Bill Murray played Thompson. Gibney may not have the identifiable style of an Errol Morris, or the populist flair of a Michael Moore, who among filmmakers might be best be called “gonzo,” but he has made some of the most information-packed, incisive documentaries of the last few years, including Who Killed the Electric Car? and Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room. You probably should have some interest in the 1960s counterculture, American political history, or journalism to enjoy this movie. But if so, it’s a worthwhile portrait of a man who helped change the way we look at all three.

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viewed 6/30/08 (screening at Ritz 5); reviewed 7/10/08

The U.S. vs. John Lennon (***1/4)

? This documentary is broader than the title would suggest. Although the second half does explore the Nixon administration’s efforts to discredit and deport the former Beatle, who had moved to New York, nearly an hour is devoted to what preceded that. There’s a good deal of footage of both Lennon the political activist and other activities happening at the same time, mostly centered around anti-Vietnam War protests. Contemporary interviews of various leftish types such as Angela Davis, Gore Vidal, and George McGovern supplement the old clips.

+  The period footage of Lennon himself is most fascinating. This includes, for example, footage of Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, co-hosting The Mike Douglas Show and featuring Black Panther Bobby Seale as a guest. There’s also Lennon/Ono’s famous “bed-ins” designed to raise awareness while placating a press fascinated by the newlyweds. While the singer’s aims were serious, he appeared not to take himself too seriously, unlike many of his contemporaries. The sight of thousands of demonstrators in Washington, DC, chant his simple hit song “Give Peace a Chance,” also reveals Lennon as a savvy marketer of nonviolence. (This footage is an upbeat change from the vulgar chant directed at the Johnson White House, seen earlier.) Ono is also one of the people interviewed by the filmmakers, and she’s helpful in explaining Lennon’s state of mind, which could be described as paranoid, except that the government really was out to get him.

- The movie’s a lot better at putting the investigations into the context of Lennon’s life than the activities of the Nixon administration, though there are some efforts in that direction. Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy would appear to be the only pro-“establishment” figure interviewed. (Nixon White House counsel John Dean and a couple of 1970s FBI agents appear too, but expressing regret.) Additionally, I would have liked the film to further explore the effect of the investigations on Lennon’s psyche. One can presume that his move away from political music (along with his retreat from political activism) as well as his two-year “lost weekend” that began in 1973 might have stemmed from the stress created by the government’s lengthy efforts to deport him. But it would have been useful for the film to discuss this.

= ***1/4 A worthwhile film that will appeal to Lennon fans and students of cultural history, less to those interested in political skullduggery.

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