Surprise Penis

Okay, so I got you to look. Cheap trick, maybe, but read on and see that it is not entirely irrelevant to the post; and how would I otherwise get you to look at a movie review of mine? I have been in a movie theater exactly once in the past four or five months. Why? Who cares? Lots of reasons . . . but today I did cross that threshold back into the cinematic temple; and I'm so very glad I did. It has been some 31 years since Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a movie I'm pretty sure I haven't seen. The reason I'm pretty sure I haven't seen it is that Forest Whitaker is in it, and I've never seen him give a performance that wasn't memorable or moving in some way. He has been the best thing about most movies he has appeared in. He was out of The Crying Game within the first 30 minutes of the film, but he made me cry with a remarkable, tender performance as a character called Jody, before he was dispatched by a truck as he attempted an escape from captivity by the IRA. He was the most memorable thing about that movie, surpassing by far even the surprise penis that popped out toward the end and was the talk of the movies then.

I think this movie has been out for several weeks, so I'm a little late to the game. Nevertheless, The Butler is a very good movie and worth commenting on, though it's far from perfect; and Whitaker, as White House butler Cecil Gains, is the very best thing in it. I have never seen an actor play his character aging more convincingly, more perfectly, even if the makeup did not particularly support his efforts. The character he created is a placid lake with a boiling but very deep bottom. He has a repressed and righteous anger revealed only with a look here and there, and fury at his oldest son who uses truth to terrify him by probing that lake, threatening his self-regard in his lifelong vocation as a servant, and his commitment to professional invisibility. Cecil is the anti-Forrest Gump: there for all the greatest moments in the last half of the last century, but playing no significant role in anything. He is only there, in the White House to serve, he must see and hear nothing, express no opinions, and certainly make no waves. Oprah, as his wife Gloria, was also very good, making me almost forget she was Oprah for most of the movie. I've never been a big fan, never seen her TV show, but I've seen her in a few movies now. She's a pretty damn good actress.

More makeup issues, and bad casting: the presidents. For those of us old enough to have seen these Commanders in Chief, well, the word laughable comes to mind. Allen Rickman as Reagan? Come on. Was he cast as a bit of irony because he has previously played some classic villains? The movie portrays him as a good man on a person-to-person basis, but insensitive to the human consequences of his policies. Fair enough, but it was an odd and unsuccessful portrayal. The famous Rickman sneer was oddly present under layers of very bad makeup, and as for Rickman, who's usually very good . . . was that a Southern accent? I was never quite sure. And I'll say no more about that than this: John Cusack as Nixon? Really? Liev Schreiber as LBJ? Bizarre, and again, the makeup made it worse. Thankfully these appearances were little more than cameos, and could not rob the movie of its fuel, provided by Whitaker, Winfrey, and a pretty terrific screenplay.

The screenplay, by actor/writer Danny Strong, does a wonderful job of juxtaposing the experience of Cecil's (fictional) oldest son, Louis (well played by David Oyelowo), an activist participant in the most important events of the civil rights movement, with Cecil's life of service. Particularly powerful, just shy of heavy-handed (as some scenes indeed are), is a scene of Cecil serving at a state dinner at the White House while his son is refused service, with other activists, in 1960, at the infamous Greensboro lunch counter.

There are a number of profoundly moving moments in this movie, and just a few that might make you cringe. As with most biopics, the sentimentality almost rots your teeth at times. Both white and black characters are sometimes caricatures. Indeed, Gain's oldest son was simply made up in order to attach the story to the greater civil rights movement. Sweeping through history usually presents problems in movies that seek to do it, and that is certainly true here--to be fair, I'm sure that's a damn difficult thing to do cinematically. In the end, however, Forest Whitaker's character carries this movie upon his own strong and gentle shoulders in such a way as to make it irresistible.

'