At the Movies and Robin Williams

I'd driven past the marquee several times that indicated the movie house was showing The Butler, with Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, and others. Then we moved to the other end of town and the sign was no longer visible on the drive home. However, it stayed on our radar and last month we finally got around to watching it.

This was an outstanding movie, although a tiny bit predictable in places. It joins my personal list of films I have trouble watching, because they are so well done. Sideways, Crash, and Dead Poets Society all fit in this category.

I won't bore you with lengthy plot discussions, but the movie is centered around the life of Cecil Gaines (Whitaker), who serves eight presidents during his tenure as a butler at the White House. He works there during some very turbulent times, including Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

It was a history lesson unlike any I've ever seen. I like seeing who we are, as a people/nation, and where we've been. We first see Cecil as a boy working on a cotton farm in the deep south. We watch him grow into a man and see him get out of the cotton field, and see how these historical events affect his work, his wife, and his kids. It also gave us a small look into what it was like being a black man trying to raise his family in the shadow of these times.

The ensemble cast was impeccable, including Vanessa Redgrave, John Cusack, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Lenny Kravitz, and more. Great actors all got together to put a stellar product out there. I enjoy movies that are well written, tell me a story, and make me feel something. Director Lee Daniels told me a story from a different perspective, and I loved it.

Another cast member in The Butler, playing the role of Dwight Eisenhower (son of Kansas), was Robin Williams. Surely by now you've heard of his death by suicide at the age of 63. I will not judge the man for the choices he made. I am about as sad as I was when I heard of the deaths of James Gandolfini and Philip Seymour Hoffman. We are lesser for not having these men around, they are sorely missed, and we will no longer get to marvel at their creativity.

The First Lady and I commemorated Williams' passing by having a bit of a Robin Williams film festival. We watched The Fisher King, Good Morning Vietnam, and The Birdcage. For someone whose persona was a man with a scalding case of ADHD, he sure did seem to fully grasp the nuances of his characters in these films. I had never seen The Birdcage, and it was fantastic. I've also seen him in Dead Poets Society, as mentioned, and Good Will Hunting, and he was fabulous. He was in too many other films to mention here, but I look forward to seeing some of his other stuff, including a rewatching of What Dreams May Come. What an actor.

He also did one hell of a job of making us laugh and forget our troubles. If you haven't listened to A Night at the Met (1986) you owe it to yourself to give it a shot.