There have been a number of films about the Deep South during the Civil Rights era, mostly ("Mississippi Burning" and "Ghosts of Mississippi" being examples) concentrating on the political struggle for equality. "The Help" is a recent film which brings a slightly different approach to this period, concentrating on the relationship between well-to-do white Southerners and their black maids.
Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman from a wealthy family in Jackson, Mississippi. She has ambitions to make a career in writing and journalism, and plans to write a book about the experiences of black maids (referred to as "the help") working for white families. Unlike most of her friends, Skeeter is a liberal on racial issues and is horrified by the bigoted views which she has heard other white women express, often quite openly in front of their black servants. She hopes that her book will help to expose this sort of prejudice, but finds that no maids are willing to be interviewed.
Eventually, however, two maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, come forward. Both have good cause to be dissatisfied with their employers, especially Minny who has not only been sacked but also falsely accused of theft. Minny's employer Hilly is a particularly unpleasant individual, with an obsession with forcing black maids to use separate toilet facilities from the families they work for. The real reason for Minny's sacking was that she used the family's indoor bathroom rather than use an outside toilet during a thunderstorm. (One thing I have never understood why people like Hilly, who obviously has a poisonous dislike of all black people, did not simply employ a white maid; perhaps they could not find any white women willing to work for the low wages that black maids were paid).
Some films with a "civil rights" theme, "Mississippi Burning" being an example, have a male-dominated cast, but "The Help" is very much a "women's film" with all the main roles, both heroines and villains, being taken by women. There is an attempt to give Skeeter a boyfriend, but their brief friendship- it never really deserves the name "romance"- fizzles out when he disapproves of her book and of her views on the race question. With that exception, all the male actors play very minor roles.
With the exception of Bryce Dallas Howard from "The Village" and Viola Davis, who greatly impressed me in "Doubt", most of the leading actresses in the film were faces I had never seen before. (I must admit that I did not recognise Howard, here a brunette although normally a redhead). I understand that Jessica Chastain actually made seven feature films in 2011- a quite remarkable work-rate for a modern actress- but this is the only one I have yet seen. Chastain plays Celia Foote, Skeeter's only ally among Jackson's housewives. Although Celia's husband is from the city's wealthy elite, she herself is from a working-class background, which means that the likes of Hilly despise her as poor white trash who has got above herself. Although historically many poor whites were just as racist as rich ones, if not more so, Celia's experience of being on the receiving end of bigotry makes her a much more liberal employer. (Minny goes to work for her after being sacked by Hilly).
Chastain's is one of a number of excellent performances in this film; the others come from Emma Stone as Skeeter, Davis (even better here than she was in "Doubt") as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as the sharp-tongued Minny, a woman determined to fight back against prejudice. (Spencer won a "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar).
I would have a couple of criticisms of the film. Howard as Hilly, like some of the other actresses playing the snooty society matrons, plays her character rather too much as a one-dimensional stereotype, the snobbish upper-class bitch. The sub-plot involving Minny's chocolate pie seemed out of place, the sort of vulgar humour which would be more at home in a Farrelly Brothers gross-out comedy than in a supposedly serious film. I would not, however, agree with the criticism some have made that the film demeans African-Americans by showing them as dependent upon whites for their emancipation. It is the black characters here who display real courage in bringing their working conditions to public notice, far more so than does Skeeter. She risks nothing worse than losing the friendship of a few people she never cared for in the first place; they risk the loss of their jobs and their livelihoods, and possibly also violence from white racists.
Despite my criticisms, I felt that overall "The Help" was an excellent film- a well-acted, emotionally satisfying human drama with some powerful acting performances, and one which shed an interesting light on this period of American history. 8/10
25 out of 32 found this helpful