“The Help”

Film Quality: 9]

“The Help” mixes tender moments and humor into the 1960s civil rights movement.

            Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives--and a Mississippi town--upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families.                 

            “The Help” would appear to be a woman’s film. Yes, I watched the movie in a theater mostly of ladies of all ages, including a few Red Hatted ones. What separates this story from other narratives like this is the quality of the actresses who force action into this harshly segregated world. Yes, there are stereotypes which sometimes grate against the nerves, but this means that we will pay attention, and we will overlook the overemphasis on character types, and we will at times despise Hilly Holbrook (Brice Dallas Howard). You won’t like her, but she gives a lightning stroke performance.

            In addition to Stone as Skeeter, there is Viola Davis as Aibileen who is the first to open up, and Octavia Spencer as Minny--three very different, spunky, extraordinary women in Jackson, Mississippi during the racially torn 1960s, who build an unlikely friendship around a secret writing project that breaks Jackson’s social rules and puts them all at risk. From this clandestine alliance a remarkable sisterhood emerges, instilling all of them with the courage to transcend the lines that define them, and the realization that sometimes those lines are made to be crossed--even if it means bringing everyone in town face-to-face with the changing times. Finally it seems that everyone in town has a thing or two to say when they become unwittingly--and unwillingly--caught up in those changing times.

            Fleshing out the characters is Celia (Jessica Chastain), a giddy beauty from the dirt roads who snags one of the rich gentlemen, who may have had a connection to Hilly. Celia has no cultured upbringing, but that will change when she hires Minny. Also Celia has a secret told only by her rosebushes. Hilly’s addled mother is made comically marvelous by the seasoned actress Sissy Spacek. In this film the actors—Chris Lowell, Mike Vogel, Brian Kerwin--are mere pawns to be moved around as needed. Very seldom do they provoke conflict. But conflict there is! In a society, in this case fictionalized, where Black maids are forbidden to use the family’s toilets, or to reuse the family’s dinnerware, there is going to be tension when the underlings seek their rights. That time comes when Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan comes home after college to write a book about society from the maids’ viewpoint, focusing on the children the maids have raised. Often the maids are conflicted when ordered to do two things at once.

            The thinly fictionalized actions of this class of downtrodden Americans probably would not have changed the course of civil rights, but those involved certainly felt an encouraging smile to see their spiteful mistresses get their due punishment. If you don’t feel a satisfaction at the end of “The Help,” then maybe your side didn’t win the Civil War. And may I say that before you eat a slice of the enemy’s pie, examine it carefully.

            Family Rating: PG-13 for thematic material including race relations, epithets, and intentional cruelty. Pre-teens will have no interest.

            Also featuring: Allison Janney and Cecily Tyson. Directed by Tate Taylor, from the novel by Kathryn Stockett. Languid musical score by Thomas Newman. (2 hr. 17 min.)

            Also opening: FINAL DESTINATION 5. [Unpreviewed] Family Rating: R for violence and terror, and for language. 30 MINUTES OR LESS. [Unpreviewed] Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride. Family Rating: R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity and some violence.