Cambridge Day, Charleston City Paper and Here and Sphere
‘The Butler’: He serves eight presidents, and as a tale of black experience in U.S.
August 14, 2013
In the wake of the George Zimmerman trial, you couldn’t ask for a better movie – or I should say movies – to help carve out a common understanding in the middle of the racial divide. No matter how you took the Zimmerman decision, Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station” delivered an air-tight version of the same story with the same tragic end, the main difference being that the shooting took place before an audience of cellphone cameras, leaving no wiggle room for conjecture as to what happened between two men in the dark. But also, and more to the point, the “based on real events” docudrama tapped eloquently into the plight of the young black man struggling to succeed in a society reticent to give him a fair shake based on the color of his skin.
To underscore that, and for anyone who’s of the mindset that we’re beyond the Civil Rights era and affirmative action and that opportunity is out there for all to take on equal terms, sit through “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and see if you still feel that way. Perhaps the best way to describe “The Butler” is as a short, painful history of the black man in America. The film centers on one, who grew up basically a slave in the early 1900s and went on to serve eight presidents as a staff server in the White House. Continue reading
The plot moves like whiplash. L.A. is now a wasteland reminiscent of the South African ghettos that the wayward aliens in “District 9” inhabited and the rich reside on the lush, luxury ring-world (thank you Larry Niven!) of the title that’s just a 20-minute shuttle ride up into the sky. Up there, universal health care is a reality, they have medi-pods that can heal anything from cancer to the clap. They can even rebuild your face should it get shot off – if your brain still works. But to get a medi-pod to heal, you must be a barcoded citizen of Elysium; if you live on Earth, you’re living in the new third world and there’s no grand social program to cover your ass. 
For those not in the know, Linda Lovelace (born Linda Boreman) was the first adult performer to become a household name and regular punchline for Johnny Carson and other late-night talk show hosts as the free-love ’60s melted into the commercialism of the ’70s. Part of that was because she was simply the star of one of the first adult films with high-quality production values and (ahem) a plot – one in which Lovelace’s ingénue can’t find her clitoris because it’s in the back of her throat. The film caught fire (it would make $600 million, and all Lovelace got was $1,250). Hugh Hefner (played with avuncular smarm by James Franco) was a fan, Lovelace got the red carpet treatment and some even embraced the film as an anthem of female sexual liberation. But behind closed doors was a different story – one of abuse at the hands of Lovelace’s husband, Chuck Traynor. 
The head trip objective runs the narrative arc fairly straight up, with a few scatological sprinkles and moronic lunacy along the way. In most every scene, Jamie’s shrieking hubris consumes the screen, and it doesn’t help that he can’t speak Spanish. As far as the project’s origins, you can almost see director Sebastián Silva and Cera cooking it up after coming down from an altered state: “Hey man, all we need is an investor or your indie famous mug on Kickstarter.” One-time child star Gaby Hoffman checks in as the title character continually at odds with Jamie. She’s a true free spirit, exemplified resoundingly as she drinks cocktails with the boys in the buff. Jamie, who sees her as an interloper, tells her to cover up, but no one else cares. So goes the movie. She’s tuned in, in touch and can speak the language; he’s just an ugly American. That’s the trip. 
At 2 a.m. New Year’s Day in 2009, Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black man, was shot and killed by a transit cop as he lay face down and partially restrained on the platform of the subway stop of the title. It was a tragic end to a buoyant and hopeful evening as Oscar and his friends tried to make their way back to Oakland, Calif., from a sojourn across the Bay to see the fireworks. 
Given the “cool” factor, it’s no surprise that the immortal mutant with a metal-reinforced skeleton and rapier-sharp retractable blades in his wrists got his own franchise. The first installment, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” didn’t exactly wow, but backstory up ’til “last we left off” tends to do that. Here in “The Wolverine” we’re post the last X-Men chapter (”X-Men: The Last Stand”) and Logan is living (and looking) like a vagrant in the Yukon and depressed about the death of his beloved Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, who comes to him in dream sequences). He’s got a grizzly bear as neighbor, but before we get to all that, there’s the important rewind back to Nagasaki during World War II when Logan saves one of his captors from “the bomb.” That benefactor went on to become a wealthy industrialist and now, on his deathbed, would like Logan to pay him one final visit. 
And while the arc, ambiance and elements of the films bear many similarities, the context and articulation could not be further apart. Mads Mikkelsen, whom most U.S. viewers know as Hannibal Lecter in the self-titled NBC TV series or the European badass who bashed in Bond’s balls in “Casino Royale,” plays Lucas, a quiet man trying to gain some degree of custody of his teen son in the aftermath of a bitter divorce. 
In “Drive,” the story was rooted with a true antihero who comes to the aid of the hapless family next door, a simple setup that played out in the darkest recesses of the black and white spectrum. Here, though, there’s not a true right and just corner. Those who seemingly mete out justice by disemboweling others later prove to be morally ambiguous and perhaps even the face of evil. 
Del Toro has always been an intricate craftsman. The signs were evident in his quirky first outing, “Cronos” and best showcased in his Spanish Civil War-era films “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone.” His ventures into larger, more mainstream projects such as “Mimic” never took flight or, like “Hellboy” and its sequel, never forged an audience the way less articulate hero fare such as “The Avengers” have – truly the audience’s loss. But here the Mexican-born auteur with a penchant for horror and sci-fi seems eager to show prospective converts that he belongs, and he takes his shot in a very big way. 
