Butler's Cinema Scene

“PRISONERS” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Sept. 20)

153 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Prisoners” is a grim, joyless thriller that briefly toys with being something more before thinking the better of it and settling down to being just a grim, joyless thriller.

It was made by Denis Villeneuve, a French filmmaker whose “Incendies” – a multigenerational story set in the violence-plagued Middle East  — won my vote for the best release of 2010.  That film flowed effortlessly forward and backward in time to tell an epic story of revenge and forgiveness, and compared to it “Prisoners” should have been pretty easy going.

But there’s something at war in the heart of this film, a struggle between the conventions of noir, flat-out melodrama and higher aspirations. This time Villeneuve struggles to keep all his balls in the air.

The film starts out strong with a two-family Thanksgiving dinner in a wooded working-class Pennsylvania suburb. The Dover family – Keller (Hugh Jackman), Grace (Maria Bello), teenage son Ralph (Dylan Minnette) and little daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) – are chowing down with their best friends. The hosting Birch clan consists of Franklin (Terrence Howard), Nancy (Viola Davis), teen daughter Eliza (Zoe Borde) and little daughter Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons).

The two wee girls go out to play and vanish. The parents go from mild irrirtation to concern to panic. Soon the cops are on the scene in the person of Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), a socially-challenged loner whom we meet celebrating Thanksgiving  alone at a Chinese diner. He does have this going for him: Loki has never failed to solve a case.

Question is, can he solve this one in time to save the little girls?

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“THE BUTLER” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Aug. 16)

132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I’m not a huge fan of Lee Daniels (“Precious,” “The Paperboy”) or of his new film “The Butler.”

But I think I understand what he’s trying to do with this multi-decade story about a poor black man from the South who becomes a member of the White House staff, serving presidents and eavesdropping on America’s movers and shakers.

And I think he got the job done.

One of the drawbacks of better race relations in this country (which is not to say that everything’s fine…check out the Missouri State Fair rodeo clown controversy) is that we now have a generation of young black people who want nothing to do with America’s troubled racial past.

They are embarrassed by the very mention of slavery and tend to take for granted the civil rights they enjoy, with little appreciation of the generation of activists whose sacrifices made those advancements possible.

“The Butler,” I think, is aimed directly at this indifferent audience and seems to have been fashioned specifically to bring them up to speed, to force them to confront  the bad old days of their grandparents.

It’s not a particularly artful film (despite a couple of fine performances) and is frequently downright clumsy. But it succeeds in bringing to life the arc of 20^th century African American history in an accessible and dramatic manner.

Inspired by the life of Eugene Allen (1919-2010)– who worked for 34 years in the White House, rising through the ranks to become maître d’hotel (top butler) —  Danny Strong’s screenplay is the fictional story of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker).

Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker

Early on Strong and Daniels lay things on with a trowel. One of the film’s first images is of two black men dangling from nooses. Then we’re back in the 1920s in a Southern cotton field where young Cecil witnesses  his mother (Mariah Carey) being sexually abused by the landowner’s swaggering son. When her husband  objects to this outrage, he is shot dead.

Shades of  “Mandingo.”

The lady of the plantation (Vanessa Redgrave, the first of an endless stream of big-name actors making cameo appearances) takes pity on young Cecil and declares she’ll make him a “house nigger.” Under her training he becomes an ideal servant, finally taking off on his own to launch a career first at a Southern hotel, then at one in Washington D.C.  That’s where he’s spotted and invited to work at the White House.

“The Butler” attempts to balance Cecil’s private life against the era’s burning social issues. Much of the tension comes from his belief, drilled into him, that a good butler should never make his presence known unless directly addressed by those he is serving. Cecil believes in hard work and personal advancement. He is decidedly uncomfortable with questions of politics or public policy, which leads to decades of tension with his activist son Louis (David Oyelowo) and charges of Uncle Tom-ism. 

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“FRUITVALE STATION”  My rating: A (Now playing wide.)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

If “Fruitvale Station” was concerned only with a young man’s death on an Oakland train platform early in the hours of Jan. 1, 2009, it would be hard going, indeed.

But Ryan Coogler‘s stunning writing/directing debut is less about dying than about living, and by attempting to limn the world of one individual it becomes the story of an entire class of contemporary Americans.

“Fruitvale Station” was inspired by the shooting by a Bay Area Rapid Transit cop of 22-year-old Oscar Grant. I’m giving nothing away by letting you know that Oscar dies.  It’s the first thing you see in the movie.

In grainy cell-phone video — Is this real footage or a re-enactment? Can’t tell — we see transit police officers standing over several young black men sitting with their backs against a wall of the Fruitvale BART station. A ruckus breaks out and the cops jump on one of the  young men, who is lying on the concrete. We hear observers yelling at the officers to stop. Suddenly there’s a gunshot…

Melonie Diaz

The film proper begins almost 24 hours earlier. Oscar (the Oscar-bound Michael B. Jordan), his live-in girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and their pre-school age daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal) are waking up on Dec. 31, 2008.

Oscar and Sophina are having a quiet early-a.m. argument. Oscar has had sex with another woman. He says it only happened once. No, she says, you only got caught once.

But Oscar swears fidelity, says he wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with Sophina and little Tatiana, in whose presence he becomes the playful, loving and responsible Daddy.

We follow Oscar through his day. He goes to a grocery story to buy food for a big birthday bash that night for his mother, Wanda (Octavia Spencer). While there he begs his former boss to give him back his job — he was fired two weeks earlier for being regularly late for his shift.

“Do you want me selling dope?” the desperate young man asks the manager, who has already filled Oscar’s old position and cannot rehire him.

He hasn’t told Sophina that he’s out of work.

Out on the street a speeding car run down a stray dog.  Oscar holds the animal until it gives a final shudder.

That night, with little Tatiana safe at her aunt’s house, Oscar, Sophina and friends take the train into San Francisco to watch the New Year’s fireworks. On the way back there’s a delay and the group turn the car into a nightclub with a pair of battery-powered speakers and an iPod. Everyone — black, white, gay, straight — boogies down.

Like a square dance in a John Ford film, it’s a diverse community suddenly coming together.

And all the while they’re getting closer to Fruitvale Station.

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