As with many inspiring historical events, such as beating the Nazis, the Civil Rights Movement of the mid to late 60s has inspired many films on the events of that period, both real and fictional. Sadly, many of these well-meaning movies take the wrong tact and show how equality for African-Americans came about because, in the world of the film, white people got involved and helped out. Now, surely there were plenty of white people involved in the struggle, and some movies are worse than others, but this basic description does include The Help.
Of course, some movies are worse than others about this sort of thing. True, the various maids don't feel the slightest bit empowered enough to actually do something about their lives in the small Mississippi town where they toil for their more affluent neighbors, such that it only takes the return of white girl/budding feminist/believer in equal rights Skeeter Phelan (played by Emma Stone), who decides the way to start her career as a writer is not to toil away on the local newspaper's cleaning advice column, but rather to write about what it's like being a black maid working for white people.
(It's probably worth noting you know this is a movie when a woman who looks like Emma Stone is considered to be less attractive than any of the other girls in town.)
Still, what could end up being a very by-the-numbers tale of personal empowerment comes out better than perhaps it should due to powerful performances from the two principal maids, Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer). Davis' Aibileen has "world weary" stamped all over her, from her walk to her eyes, only really coming to life when she is working with her current employer's neglected baby girl. Spencer's Minny, the finest cook in town, has a temper, but also a deep sense of propriety (a necessity for the maids of this town) and when the one causes her to temporarily forget the other, she finds herself going to the one place in town someone like her might be really appreciated, working for the social outcast white woman Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), who actually seems to treat her as a friend, and even allows her to stick around when the title book is published revealing all the dirty, race-related laundry for the whites who think they need to keep black people in their place.
This is actually something of a small problem for me. Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly Holbrook seems almost cartoonishly evil. While I know, objectively, that there were highly racist people in the United States at that time (and still today, only then it was more socially acceptable), part of me thinks the moviemakers went a bit overboard with their depiction of the self-centered woman who seems to run the entire town's social scene. Skeeter's lack of interest in Hilly's newsletter, as Skeeter seems to feel compelled to actually attend meetings for bridge or other social events, all run by Hilly, show she hasn't gotten too far from a woman she may consider a friend, but Hilly's gossipy ways and the treatment she issues to her own somewhat senile mother (played by a daffy Sissy Spacek) suggests the woman had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Given what kind of pie she eats, maybe this was to cut out any potential for sympathy the viewer might be tempted to feel for her.
The movie does depict that not all whites were equally horrible to their maids. Skeeter keeps asking about her own family's maid, and when she finally learns the awful truth, also learns the family tried to get her back from Chicago only to learn the old lady died there. Skeeter's formidable mother (Allison Janey, who's in, like, everything) becomes one of the few people to take her side when things go bad, but this sadly plays more into the cliched narrative of the movie, perhaps suggesting it was from her family, not Ole Miss, that Skeeter learned her sense of right from wrong.
Part of my reason for wanting to see this recently had to do with a radio interview I heard from Precious director Lee Daniels, who said that he had older relatives who were the hired help, and they had it rougher than the help in The Help. This also leads me to think it may be time for me to finally watch Spike Lee's Malcolm X.
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