"The room should feel empty when you're in it."

This line proved to be a great lesson for Cecil Gaines, impressively portrayed by Forest Whitaker, when he became a "house niggah" for the first time in Macon, Georgia. Cecil was raised in a cotton field and witnessed his mother's rape and the white son who raped her shoot his father in the head when the boy Cecil yelled to his father, "Daddy, what you gonna do?" His father turned to the white master as he was pulling up his suspenders and yelled, "Hey!" The white man turned, pulled his pistol and shot him right in the head. The white rapist's mother, played by Vanessa Redgrave told Cecil as he crouched over his dead father's body, "Stop crying. I'm gonna make you a house niggah." Turns out this was the greatest career training she could have provided the boy. The title line was years later told to him as instruction for being a butler in the White House. Lee Daniels' The Butler is a wonderful work.

Cecil was butler to eight presidents and is based on a true story. The makeup work in this movie to not only age Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, but to make great stars resemble the presidents they portrayed from Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower to Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan was impeccable and deserves an Oscar nod as well. Personalities of presidents were subtly presented in the form of how they gave campaign buttons to the help. Nixon threw his buttons on the pastry board  as the butler staff were making dough, asking them to have their people vote for him. Lyndon Johson personally presented his tie clasp to Cecil saying he and his wife thought it matched the color of his eyes. I always wonder how much fact is in a movie like this versus fiction to create the story. This story is very powerful.

Not only did the movie hit on all the major events of the civil rights movement: college students eating in a white only section of the lunch counter and "Bloody Sunday", it mirrored events happening in America with more intimate discrimination in the White House itself. Every president was portrayed to abhor the violence being perpetrated against blacks in America, yet the black staff in our most famous house were payed less than white staff and not allowed to promote. In the scene with Nixon in the pantry kitchen, then Vice President running for election to be President,  the inequities were reluctantly raised by one butler played by Lenny Kravitz, but ignored once Nixon got into office. Cecil ultimately took up this gauntlet through the years he worked there, but was ignored until he dared raise it with President Reagan directly, which got the White House Engineer fired. The satisfaction of Cecil's victory by the smile on Cecil's face as he personally informed the Engineer was priceless.

Cecil's oldest son was embarrassed by his father's occupation because he became a life-long protestor, who hung around with Martin Luther King and became a Black Panther. He went to college in Tennessee and met his first love who brought him to his first protest meeting where they joined others to sit at the lunch counter and get beaten and arrested for the first time. His father grew more angry with time at his son's insurrections and seeming disrespect, and it wasn't until long after his youngest son was killed in Vietnam and protests began against Apartheid, that Cecil realized his son was not a trouble-maker but a hero, who was "creating the soul of the country". Both father and son learned powerful lessons about what it meant to be a black American: one who conforms to make life better, and one who fights for the same goal.

If Oprah Winfrey doesn't get an Oscar for her performance as Cecil's wife, Gloria, I will be very surprised. Both Mr. Whitaker and Ms. Winfrey's performances were perfect. Gloria began as the proud wife turned frustrated, lonely adulterer as Cecil's White House duties kept him away from home most of the time. Gloria learned to hate the White House, and resented that Cecil never made good on his promise to take her there to visit. She ultimately got there when Nancy Reagan chose to honor Cecil for his years of service by inviting him with his wife to a State Dinner as guests. This evening proved to become a turning point for Cecil. He had always been proud and happy to be of service, but in his old age and after that dinner, he didn't know his place anymore, and it confused him. I remember working with a black woman in a day care center in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1978 and having my first racial discussion with a black from the south. She said to me, "You Yankees think we're so discriminated against and abused here in the South, but look at what's happening in Boston with that busing business. Y'all just don't know your place. If you knew your place, you'd get along just fine." I didn't know what to say to this, but Cecil echoed the sentiment in this movie.

I was moved to tears by this film. It is powerful and beautifully acted. The politics are poignant and "spot on", but portrayed in a slightly different way than other films about the fight for civil rights in America. My heart ached to know I lived through those times, and once again made me wonder: What would I fight and die for? You'll be disappointed on Oscar night if you didn't see this film, so you can root for it to win Best Picture.