Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave—the former released last November, and the latter in theaters this March in Korea—have received acclaim worldwide. Both earned Screen Actor Guilds Awards and Golden Globe nominations. But whether the movies really live up to their reputations is for audiences to decide. 

When word first spread that famous film director Lee Daniels was to produce an American historical drama film based on the real life of Eugene Allen, anticipation was high. The story of a White House butler who served eight American presidents over three decades of dramatic change, including the civil rights era, and how his job affected his life and family naturally triggers attention. That, coupled with a star-spangled cast including Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard, and Alan Rickman, made the biopic a film to look forward to.   

And most certainly, The Butler’s acting was amazing. Oprah Winfrey’s performance as the neglected wife of title role butler Cecil Gaines was especially enchanting, with her seductive but distraught charm. But the movie’s fault lies not in its acting, but its almost history book-like plot.  

The movie covers an expansive period of American history that is crowded with significant historical events—the desegregation of Little Rock, the oppression of the Freedom Riders, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the assasination of JFK, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, to list but a few. These events would by themselves each be more than enough subject matter for one movie, and by jam-packing them into one, none of these important stories gets the attention it deserves. The Butler thus is classy production that is well-acted, but lacks depth and reach. Too much seems to be as bad as too little. 

On this note, another movie to consider watching is 12 Years a Slave. It too was inspired by a real life story about black oppression and received many positive reviews, eventually being nominated for nine Academy awards.  (The Butler received no nominations.)  

Overall, 12 Years a Slave is a decent enough movie. About a free black citizen of the North who was kidnapped and forced to work on plantations in the South in pre-Civil War America, it is particularly helpful for those unclear about the workings of slavery. The movie also relates to a wider audience when compared to other movies on slavery in the South because its main focus is on the individual story of a black man who was thrown into slavery rather than one who was born into it. People can sympathize with Solomon’s exasperation, desperation, and horror upon being forced into subjugation overnight.

The movie is also laudable for its sense of aesthetic beauty. The horrors carried out in these places aside, the plantations of the Deep South are breathtaking. The endless fields of white blooming cotton, lush green grass, and cloudless blue skies are picturesque, as are the occasional scenic shots of thick branches against the setting sun. The cinematography was certainly worth Oscar attention, and it seemed to prove that just because a movie’s subject matter is dark does not necessarily mean the movie shots themselves have to be dark.

But all that 12 Years a Slave does right is negated by what it does wrong. To begin with, the movie drags on for a whopping two and a half hours, and all the while lacks a sense of continuity. It comes across as a sort of scrapbook of individual acts of violence, and thus after a while starts to become dull. The boredom is interrupted only by sporadic acts of visceral violence.

The film certainly does highlight the story's violence. The filming technique itself serves to add to the jarring horror. Many a scene is filmed in a single uncut shot without any change of perspective, thus wrenching away the comfort viewers feel when they are reminded that they are watching a film. “There's no escape—you are drawn further and further into the event because at no point are you being told, ‘This isn't real,’” as the film's cinematographer Sean Bobbitt put it.

Of course, supporters of the film could argue that such techniques are necessary for the realistic portrayal of the abominable institution of slavery. Yet after 150 minutes of back-shredding whip-cracking, lynching, and raping, viewers cannot help but feel disturbed. If that happened to be the message of the film, so be it—but it would have been so much more powerful if it had been accompanied with more emotional or psychological narrative.  

The most probable reason why 12 Years a Slave is receiving more acclaim than The Butler lies perhaps not in its spectacularly superior plot or acting, but because it ends as a “white savior” narrative. Northup’s troubles are put to an end by a sympathetic abolitionist carpenter; this ending leaves white audiences with a feel-good factor after all the violence shown that they inflicted upon helpless black slaves. Though the Canadian abolitionist’s action alone does not cancel out the injustice inflicted upon slaves, it does leave them with the comfort that not all whites were hardened, exploitative plantation owners.  

In the end, though, neither movie truly lives up to its reputation. They might be appropriate for passing the time, but they are neither light entertainment, nor deeply moving. The proliferation of Black cinema, commonly attributed to the “Obama effect,” is a very positive phenomenon—but be sure to try out other Black movies like Fruitvale Station that steer away from the slavery narrative and instead focuses on more contemporary issues—and you’ll be in for a better treat.

▲ movie poster of The Butler. Provided by firstshowing.net

▲ movie poster of 12 Years a Slave. Provided by firstshowing.net