Director: Tate Taylor
Genre: Drama
Rating: A-
The Help can easily be
considered to be one of the best movies of 2011. I say that not in a “this is one of those
movies that is so awesome and deserves to win a ton of awards” kind of way, but
in a “this is the type of movie that people need to see.” This is one of those movies that deserved to
win a ton of awards, and it did win its fair share, but it’s different from so
many other movies that win awards – unlike other movies, which I won’t mention
here, which appear to value the awards potential more than the entertainment
potential, The Help is a movie that
both tells an important story while also being entertaining.
Based on the bestselling novel of the same name (because just about everything
out this year is based on either a bestselling novel or a comic), The Help is the story of Eugenia
“Skeeter” Phelan (Stone), Aibileen Clark (Davis), and Minny Jackson (Spencer)
as they embark on writing a book about being a black maid in Jackson,
Mississippi, during the 1960s. The
film’s protagonist, Skeeter, has just returned to her childhood home, after
having completed a degree at the University of Mississippi. Unlike her friends, who have all gotten
married and started families, Skeeter is attempting to embark on a career of
her own, and as such essentially stumbles upon the issue of civil rights and
the idea to write a book using the first hand experiences of the maids of her
friends. Yes, this is going to go
badly. Skeeter comes across the idea
after developing a bit of a relationship with Aibileen and discovering just how
racist her friends, particularly Hilly Holbrook (Howard), are. So she decides to write a book. About how her
friends and neighbours are horrible people.
With the help of the employees of her friends and neighbours. This movie is the story of the making of this
book. Oh, and also, there’s a side plot
surrounding the new job that Spencer’s character has as a maid for Celia Foote
(Chastain), a redneck who’s risen up in the world through her marriage, to the
great disapproval of all of Skeeter’s so-called friends.
Where the book alternates in focus between the three women rather
evenly as they struggle with the world around them (either as a white misfit or
as black maids), the movie focuses far more heavily on Skeeter’s story. As such the movie does lose some of its
character; the book is very much a story of southern black women during the
Civil Rights era, with an insight into the eyes of a white woman, as written by
a white woman. The film does utilize
many stereotypes, in its depiction of both white and black women, and fails to
address many of the issues that the book addresses. That just comes with being a film adaptation
of a book, though, you cannot address all of the issues and storylines in a
relatively short period. The story that
is presented does stay true to the book, and in its limited means does, in my
opinion, a good job of conveying the issues of the time, carefully navigating
between a serious tone and, at times, a humourous one. The three leads each do an amazing job,
although the film really is stolen by Spencer.
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