Anytime a pastor stands in the pulpit to give his opinion on a movie currently playing which he and his wife have just seen, look for trouble.
Some will resent that a pastor goes to the movies. Of those who don’t mind, some will be concerned that he admits it publicly.
Some will be concerned that the movie was not rated G and produced by Good-and-Nice Productions of Hometown, USA.
The balance of the congregation will split between those who agree with the pastor and appreciate his “take” on the movie and those upset because the movie takes liberties with history or offends their pet group, contains a mild profanity or shows the married couple in bed.
“The Butler” is in the theaters now. “Based on a true story” usually means the basic framework is historical but much of the rest has been concocted out of whole cloth. The movie has been out a couple of weeks and so on Labor Day some of my family and I decided to take it in. The reviews we’ve seen have been positive, so we were expecting an enjoyable outing.
And it was that. It was also thought-provoking and convicting.
The box office lady said the earlier showings had sold out, so we might want to grab our seats quickly.
Now, I am not pastoring a church and probably would not talk about the movie–and almost any other movie–from the pulpit if I were. But, as a 73-year-old retiree with a ton of friends but no constituents, we assume no one much cares one way or the other what I saw or how I felt. With that in mind–that is, with everyone agreeing not to get upset one way or the other–what follows is my review of “The Butler.” (Some of the points made below are in response to comments from Facebook friends.
I forgot to mention that the movie was filmed here in New Orleans. All right now….
1) The history of it.
Compress a half century of history into one 2-hour movie and you will necessarily take a few liberties and cut some corners. In this production, the Gaines family begins by being the victims of brutal racial prejudice in the 1920s (the mother is raped by a white farm-owner then her husband is killed for caring about it), then takes a front-row seat for the changing of America during the Eisenhower years through the Reagan period, and finally lives to see Barack Obama move into the White House. Son Louis Gaines participates in Woolworth sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, Black Panther meetings, and is jailed numerous times before eventually becoming a congressman. Whether one family has done all the things the movie makes the Gaineses out to have done is questionable, but it works for a good coherent story.
2) The motives behind it.
Did the movie-makers have an agenda, as some critics have said? If they didn’t, they are the first producers in the history of filmdom not to have one. Of course they did. They wanted to show this country’s transition during the racially torn decades of the 50s through the 80s through the eyes of a White House butler and his family. They wanted to honor the heroes of the civil rights movement, to celebrate how far they have come, and to leave audiences feeling the work is not completed.
In all of this, they did a great job.
Hey, I’m a white Southerner. I do not pretend to understand what it was like for African-Americans in this country during the dark days of Jim Crow laws or the stormy 1960s. (They would be insulted if I said I did.) But I know this: if I were an African-American film producer, this is the kind of stuff I’d be turning out. Tell your story. Educate the youngsters. Ignore the critics.
3) The personal touch.
Some of the most dramatic civil strife acts, I practically witnessed personally. We lived in Birmingham in the late 1950s through mid-1964, and were acquainted with the sit-ins, the fire hoses, and the burned out Freedom Rider bus. (The bombing of the church was not a part of this story, but I recall that also.) A couple of times I leaned over to my 16-year-old granddaughters and whispered that, “I saw the bus” and “I remember where I was when we heard of this.”
Our family stood outside the theater and talked about the movie before going our separate ways. I admitted that when some of these things happened in our hometown of Birmingham, we watched it on the television news, but most of the white citizens were afraid to speak out and so kept silent. Thirty miles up Highway 31, in the little church I pastored, I have no memory of addressing any aspect of these goings-on and so assume I didn’t. Doing that now is easy; to speak out then took courage of which I had very little.
4) The emotion.
Some of my friends say they wept a number of times in the story.
I teared-up a few times. Some of it was that moving. Later, I told my wife that I wanted to go up to every black person I saw on the streets and apologize. She said, “Apologize for what?” I said, “For everything. Every blessed thing.”
I know, I know. This kind of admission gets one characterized as “a bleeding heart.” I’ll take that and run with it.
5) The country’s leaders.
The presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan) are represented in the movie. Most came through all right, but a couple of my Facebook friends were upset that President Reagan was not treated as an icon the way conservatives do today. I thought they presented him in a balanced, caring light for most of the scenes in which he appeared. It was he who first invited the butler (Mr. Gaines) and his wife to attend a state dinner as guests, and Reagan who made it possible for the black ushers to receive equal pay and be promoted for higher positions. The fact that Reagan opposed the congressional action about South Africa’s “apartheid” is common knowledge.
A side note: I’m amused the way some of my politically conservative friends want to beatify President Reagan. Having lived through that period and followed politics closely during that time, I know for a fact that his record was spotty. Some things he got right and some he got wrong. He was a great speaker (of speeches written by others, we must not forget, although presumably he said nothing he did not believe) but with the advancement of age, he was becoming more and more disengaged in the details of running this country. (Please no one write me to take issue with this. It’s a matter of record.)
6. The recommendation
Would I recommend you go see the movie? Yes, without question.
Would I go back to see it again or purchase the DVD? No. I’ve seen it once and that’s enough. It’s not my story exactly, but the story of a proud segment of our society, and I respect that highly. To pick the story apart–to nitpick it–is to do them a great disservice, and haven’t they had enough of that?
Should you take the kids? Yes, particularly the older children. Then, have conversations with them later on what happened and what it means to them.
That’s why I love you Bro. Joe. I really feel like hopping in my truck and drive all the way to NO just to give you a hug. I just wonder why the rest of these good Christian folk cannot understand the struggle of African Americans in this country. thanks my friend.
Thank you for your review,I am a Pastor and look forward to seeing the movie.My prayer is,that your example of transparency will be modeled by we Pastor’s everywhere.
Do you mean the pastor can afford to go to a movie? We must be paying him too much!
(kidding !!!)
Thank you. I do value your opinion. Sounds like a good movie but I still don’t think I want to go see Jane Fonda in a movie. Am I wrong for feeling like this?
I’m so glad we are Facebook friends. You are a special fellow.
Bro. Joe, thank you for this opinion. I fully agree. Was trying to explain to someone and could not have say it any better. I might have to quote you.
You are more current with the movie than I am because you are truly a ‘Southerner’ from Alabama. Me? I am from Lubbock, Texas and do not recall the things that you actually saw. Your perspective of the movie is more accurate than many of us, and I thank you for your honesty.
Yes, I am also one of those very conservatives who has made Reagan to be, perhaps, more than he actually was in reality.
However, I will take the freedom to expand and perhaps disagree with you about the agenda that I see in the movie. I am not sure if you disagree with me or not because you were brief with this, and that is okay and really not important. I was somewhat teary-eyed a few times as well, but in the end I came to the conclusion that this was an attempt by the writers to drive a deeper wedge into the already growing chasm in racial conflict. On the other side of that, I do agree that if I were Black and one of the writers, my perspective would not doubt be driven by the facts of my personal history.
My heart in all of this is that I make every attempt to see every person in a neutral way, apart from the color of their skin. After having served as an IMB (FMB) missionary for more than a decade, God taught me the importance of seeing everyone on an equal plane and this has not been easy every time.
Again, I thank you Joe for your honesty and integrity…..Jesus is Lord. BW
Thanks for sharing your experience with THE BUTLER. I have not
viewed it yet, but expect to see it (DVD). Like you, I grew up in north
AL during the 50’s & 60’s with its built-in prejudice. Only the grace of God changed my perspective! God did use Taylor Branch’s trilogy of Parting of
the Waters, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan’s Edge to educate me in the
particular perils of the civil rights movement– recommended reading for
all self-righteous Caucasians.
And I agree that my conservative friends make more of Pres. Reagan
that is necessary.
Keep up the good work.
Dave
Bro. Joe, we go to very few movies because they do not interest me. I made the statement years ago that I would never watch a movie that has Jane Fonda in it and I am too old to change now.
Before a dramatic conversion experience I was the morning man on WRBC “Rebel Radio” in Jackson, Mississippi when freedom riders sat down at the Woolworth lunch counter on Capitol Street. A salesman (former US Marine who was at Frozen Chosin in Korea), Bob, from the radio station had me there to listen to advertising ideas from the manager when the riots broke out. Three students sat as a crowd dumped condiments on their heads and shouted at them. It was an off duty Jackson policeman who hurled the heavy chrome top & glass sugar bowl that hit one of the young men in the head and knocked him off the lunch counter stool. A Rankin County bootlegger reportedly bailed the policeman out after he was taken to the Jackson police station. The radio salesman finally said to the store manager….”why don’t you just close the store?” He did. I still feel guilty for just standing there especially with a friend who had gone across the world to march out of a terrible loss to the Chinese army in freezing weather “for the good of others”. When I saw “The Butler” with my granddaughter (I teared up, too) I was glad she has friends of different races and nationalities. It’s a freedom I grew up not knowing. .
I will not go to see the movie after researching the facts and learning how terribly wrong Hollywood got it. We are so use to accepting fiction that moves us to tears as “we’ll that is just Hollywood. Truth should be of the utmost importance for Christians and is it really being a good steward to subject ourselves to blatant misconstruing of the facts just because it is Hollywood and/or because it emotionally moves us?
Not sure what exactly you are referring to as “terribly wrong.” They sure got the feel of the racism right and a hundred other things were right on target.
Pastor, your impulse to run up to every black person and apologize does not make you a bleeding heart, but it is an act based simply on skin color. It robs the people you seek to apologize to of their individuality and self-worth, the “content of their character,” and reduces them to just another a black face in the crowd. The film takes a man’s life that needs no enhancement, and manipulates his history and his family’s history to suit their agenda. President Reagan deserved no jabs from the movie makers or you. I don’t deify him. He was a man, fallen man as we all are, and when you dismiss all who disagree with you with “It’s a matter of the record,” you cite the record of the world, of secularists who had disdain for his faith in God, the American people and the Constitution. They resented the affection the people had and have for him and try to tar him with the last refuge of scoundrels today…a charge of racism. Reagan did, in fact, write many of his own speeches and rewrote many of the most important speeches written for him against the wishes of the professional apologists for Communism, particularly the one in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The director of this movie said that that whites are showing their “true colors” in anger against President Obama and that he realized with the death of Trayvon Martin that “We still live in a racist country.” This movie is made by someone who would restrict honest discussion to the confines of race, the new America where if you disagree with someone on the merit of their ideas, you are a racist, and where if you believe in the rule of law and justice that is blind, then you are “showing your true colors.” Casting Jane Fonda, who turned in notes to her from American prisoners of war to the guards who tortured them, was just the icing on this cake, but that’s all right in the Director’s words. She was right for the role because, like others in his movie, she “stands by (her) political convictions and is not afraid to speak out publicly.”
!!!!