This adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling 2009 novel is a worthy, earnest but occasionally dull and overtly schmaltzy look at bigotry in America’s Deep South in the 1960s.
Hardly the first film to tackle that theme, of course, but at least The Help approaches it from a fresh perspective: that of the black maids who suffered persecution at the hands of their wealthy white employers while raising their kids as surrogate mothers.
The novel and the film have been attacked by some commentators in the US as a white woman appropriating a heartfelt African-American issue. Stockett, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, was inspired to write the book, her first, in part because her family had a black housekeeper who was an integral part of her life, especially after her parents divorced.
The primary heroine is a young white journalist, Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan (Emma Stone), who persuades the town’s servants to relate their experiences for a book she’s pitched to a New York publisher.
Stockett’s childhood friend, actor turned writer-director Tate Taylor, directed the $25 million movie, a leap of faith from the DreamWorks studio considering his only previous effort, Pretty Ugly People, is an obscure 2008 comedy.
Those who loved the novel will probably enjoy the film but anyone expecting a stirring, powerful drama in the vein of Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning will be disappointed.
Only one incident touches on the prevailing climate of fear and unrest with a TV news report of the assassination of Medgar Evers, a leading civil rights activist who was shot in front of his Jackson home while his wife and three young children were inside.
Taylor chooses not to dwell on that incident or its aftermath, instead inviting audiences to empathise with the downtrodden help and to admire the plucky Skeeter who was ostracised by her society friends.
The discrimination portrayed here, such as the maids not being allowed to use their bosses’ toilets and a law forbidding books being exchanged between white and black schools, will be familiar to those who’ve seen any of countless movies and TV shows that focused on that era.
The movie’s considerable heart and soul lie in the stellar performances of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as the pivotal maids who summons the courage to tell their stories.
Davis’ Aibileen Clark raised 17 children for her employers while mourning the death of her own son. Davis personifies a warm and kind woman who keeps a lid on her pain and anger.
Spencer’s Minny Jackson, Aibileen’s best friend, is employed by rich bitch Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard, exuding condescension and hostility beneath a painted smile and immaculately coiffed hair). The odious Hilly raises funds for the poor children of Africa but cruelly mistreats her maid and ultimately fires her. The outspoken Minny has an abusive husband and numerous children, and Spencer imbues the character with a feisty spirit, a sassy manner and indomitable will.
Jessica Chastain plays Celia Foote, a boozy dumb blonde and outsider who, improbably, is transformed into a saviour when she hires Minny.
The frizzy-haired, glammed-down Stone is fine as the enlightened, independent Skeeter, who has a troubled relationship with her ailing mother Charlotte (Allison Janney), although it’s hard to believe such an attractive 23-year-old had never had a boyfriend when we first see her.
Bryce Dallas Howard’s character is so filled with malice you want to boo her, but she’s a caricature in a movie filled with clichés.
The mood is leavened with a good deal of humour, some revolving around those toilets, and most amusingly when Minny wreaks revenge on Hilly by baking her a pie, whose contents I will not reveal. Sissy Spacek has a droll cameo as Hilly’s dotty, hard-drinking mother.
One of the few elements of suspense revolves around the disappearance of the Phelan family's beloved housekeeper/nanny Constantine Jefferson (Cicely Tyson).
Almost all the male characters – husbands and boyfriends including Chris Lowell as Skeeter's suitor – are mere appendages to the women, but that may not bother those who savour warmhearted chick flicks.
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