Movie Review—The Help
Directed by: Tate Taylor
Starring: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Octavia Spencer
Rating: Good Movie, Glad to Have Seen It (4 popcorn boxes out of 5)
This month’s review belongs to the recently released The Help.
A Dramatic-Historical film, filled with humor and drama.
The movie begins in Jackson Mississippi, during the 1960’sin the heat of the Civil Rights Movement. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, portrayed by Emma Stone, is a young aspiring writer just returning as an Ole Miss graduate. No husbands and babies for Skeeter, who seems to be a bit different when compared to her old friends. She finds a job writing for the local paper, a column on how to clean the house, and being a genteel southern girl, that job has always been left to someone else; the help. Now Skeeter needs some help and finds aid from one of her best friend’s domestic, Aibileen, played by Viola Davis. She cares for the house and the children, a maid and nanny rolled into one. While writing her daily column, Skeeter, has an idea to write a novel from the point of view of the local black women and the work situations and responsibilities they live with. Aibileen and her best friend Minny Jackson, depicted by Octavia Spencer, soon become involved in the writings of this novel, in a time where such outspokenness is considered unlawful and dangerous. Trouble brews not only for the Black community but also between Skeeter and her friends who are leaders in the community and also in segregation. Hilly Holbrook, characterized by Bryce Dallas Howard, is such a leader. Her friends are not ready for the change that civil rights bring and they aim to thwart an outcome they know will change the way they live.
From the beginning, the film lets you know that in the 1960’s slave times were only barely over, where the African-American women served the white community and cared for the children of these women in the face of racism and segregation. Opinions and equality were not considered.
Tate Taylor has directed a superb film that takes a very trying time, a time that was filled with dark and desperate days, and lightens it with strong relationships, courage and humor that stand up to the difficult situations. Emma Stone plays a young woman primarily raised by the help her mother employed, this was the woman who nurtured her and taught her to stand on her own two feet. Her dismissal was the turning point that leads to the novel. The movie had excellent characters that showed spirit and courage. Viola Davis is stoic and caring as the granddaughter of a house slave and nanny to a child too often left alone, who as a co-conspirator in this novel, finds aspirations of her own. Octavia Spencer’s character is feisty and mischievous, oppressed at home and in the workplace, who finds a new direction with the book’s publication. The whole community will now have to look at how the rest of the country will see them. The movie was also well-done in costumes, make-up, and living conditions for the time period. The only drawback for a better rating is that being a Disney Movie, the darker, more truthful aspects of these times were covered over.
