Whitaker's Butler is a tortured soul (largely the creation of screenwriter Danny Strong, who also wrote the Sarah Palin hatefest Game Change) who has known all kinds of heartbreak, but the Washington Post article about a real long-serving White House butler that was the original basis for the movie is free of the anguish or anger with which the movie is loaded. In the first two or three minutes there are references to two lynchings, a rape (of the butler's mother) and a racist murder (of his father).Essential for setting the quintessential victimology, and tone of hate, anger, and fear.
None of these things happened to the actual butler, who also didn't have an activist son or another son who died in the Vietnam War.
Not sure I could even eat my popcorn with all of that guilt building up.