movie review
The Help
the book by Kathryn Stockett springs beautifully to life on the big screen
In a 2001 Parade profile, Sissy Spacek said, “I had a dozen years to act before starting a family, then found motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.”
The fact that she chose The Help as her project this year speaks volumes. Based on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett, the story takes place in the 1960s and delves into important issues of Civil Rights, racial tension, and segregation. It definitely has redeeming social value.
Because the movie weaves in an engaging story about the relationships between wealthy white families in Jackson, Mississippi and the black maids who cook, clean and raise their children, it brings the story home in a way that’s relatable and real. It gives kids aged 13 and older a feel for what life was really like during that era. I’m guessing once it’s out on DVD, it’ll be shown in classrooms across the country.
Emma Stone plays Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a recent college graduate who returns home to Jackson to find all her friends married with nice homes, bridge games, charities, and black maids who do all the work, but aren’t allowed to use the bathrooms in their homes.
Skeeter gets a job with the local paper as a household-tips columnist, and turns to her friend Hilly Holbrook’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) maid Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) for help answering the questions that come in. Not the most fulfilling job, so Skeeter pitches a book idea to a New York City editor (Mary Steenburgen); a collection of stories about “the help,” told from their point of view.
It’s no easy task getting the maids to participate. Not only are there unspoken rules about blacks and whites talking about such matters, but it’s also dangerous. This is during an era when blacks were forced to sit in the back of the bus, use separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, and hauled off to jail for crimes they didn’t commit.
Skeeter finally convinces Aibileen to be secretly interviewed for the project, and Aibileen nudges her best friend, the recently fired Minny (Octavia Spencer), to tell her stories about loving and raising white kids who grow up to be just as racist as their parents.
Though the main characters are Skeeter and Aibileen, it’s really an ensemble cast with a number of Oscar-worthy performances. Spacek plays Missus Walters, Hilly’s slyly outspoken mother; Allison Janney as Charlotte Phelan, Skeeter’s cancer-ridden mother who’s socially pressured into treating her long-term maid Constantine (Cicely Tyson) badly; Jessica Chastain as Celia Foote, a kind newlywed who’s shunned by the other girls for “stealing” another woman’s man (Chastain wowed critics recently with her emotional performance in The Tree of Life); and Leslie Jordan as Mr. Blackly, Skeeter’s comically profane editor at the Jackson newspaper.
I must mention the scene-stealing performance of Bryce Dallas Howard, whose Hilly Holbrook is one of the most vile characters ever to don a pair of white gloves and pearl earrings. She’s so racist that she drafts and pushes a bill through to congress forcing white homes to have separate bathrooms for their black servants.
The Help is not only a wonderful movie to watch and absorb, it’ll also spark discussions with kids, teach a history lesson, and remind us of a particularly inhumane time in our nation’s history that should never be repeated. The settings, clothes and cars are spot-on 1960s; the soundtrack includes tunes by Mary J. Blige, Webb Pierce, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles and Mavis Staples; and although the movie is long at two hours and 17 minutes, you won’t notice the time passing by.
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