‘The Butler’

Hey y’all
Over the weekend I went to Bestival on the Isle Of Wight with some of my University house mates. It’s a music festival that showcases pretty much every genre of music. Outkast played on the Friday evening and I’m still in awe at their performance. After five days of sleeping in a leaking tent and drinking lukewarm beer I needed a day to recover and decided to watch ‘The Butler’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327773/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_7) as it has been left festering on my Sky + box for a while.

The film itself follows the story of Cecil Gaines who works his way up from being a cotton farmer in the deep South to one of the main butler’s in The White House. The film itself shows the struggle of African Americans fighting for civil rights by drawing attention to various different historical events. The most thought provoking events that cause conflict between the main characters were the events that occurred in Little Rock (1957), The Greensboro sit-ins (1960) and The Freedom Rides (1061). Not only did the film show the consequences of these events at a personal, grass roots level it also showed the effect these events had on the President at the time due to the opportunities Cecil Gaines had as a butler of The White House.

I think it’s an important film as it covers pretty much fifty years of the Civil Rights Movement and the effect it had on the entire American nation. The incredible cast shows how far society has come due to the amount of African American actors and actresses that starred in the film compared to when Sidney Poitier was one of the only main African American actors. The film takes the viewer on a journey from the era of segregation right up to the modern day which concludes with a very emotive ending. But I’m not going to reveal what happens as I wouldn’t want to ruin it!

I could genuinely write about this film all day but I’ll let you have a watch and if you have any comments about the film itself or this blog please feel free to enter them below.

Cheers,
Jack