Le Majordome

An exciting and ambivalent topic reduced to an educational, touching and flat narrative about the history of the struggle for the emancipation of blacks. It is also ideologically horribly flat and the White House is, over decades, an almost idyllic space of justice, while the KKK in the south represents an excess that is gradually crushed. There is no war, peace everywhere. Yes, we can. Oh, really? Probably fine for schools, but as a film mapping the problem of "black and negro identities" it’s terribly banal. The good news is that the favorite for the Oscars is not this servile supplicant, but instead its slightly tougher black brother McQueen. (22/01/2014)

I'll finish the joke for the movie: "...cunt is tight." I'm actually surprised that given how the film has obviously been cut like nine hundred times, and toward a completely different impression, it somewhat connects and makes sense. But any moral ambivalence is definitively abandoned this time around, and instead we're looking at more of an ode to the Democrats along the lines of "Yes we can.... No, you can!" It's painfully obvious that this was supposed to be a very different movie – tougher, more clear-eyed, and uncompromising. See the shootout between the police and the Black Panthers hinted at in the trailer – here the whole organization is reduced to a bunch of theorists from the Jericho cafe. Tarantino could mention the studio's brief use of the three submissive bumps on the skull of Lee Daniels' negro, but I was probably most entertained by the caricatures of the presidents exactly as Blue State sees them – the sympathetic idealist Kennedy, the totally incompetent overgrown child Nixon (I did a spit take at the screen during the first scene with Cusack), or the arrogant outlaw Reagan, who is always lit sharply from the right in the shots to evoke his most famous photo in front of the flag. The film was terribly hurt by downgrading its rating to make it a conscious, educational film and the moderate tone of the film that results, because if I'm going to drive hoards of teenage black men to the cinema, logically I don't want to piss them off. So it's racist. (13/02/2014)

The year 2013 brought two notable films that deal with the issue of racism in America. "12 Years a Slave" is definitely a stronger film, but "The Butler" also has the potential to reach more people. It's a bit more commercial in the sense that it effectively appeals to emotions. Forest Whitaker is also a brilliant actor and can play anything exceptionally well. If it weren't so overly dramatic and political, it would probably be better, but there's nothing to be done about it. This is a film that was supposed to please the masses. And it seems to have succeeded. With a budget of 30 million, which was paid back several times, especially in America. (07/02/2014)