Any film that tries to tackle race relations and the Civil Rights Movement has a certain set of standards which it is set against in order to distinguish itself from the humdrum, feel-good, white helps blacks garbage that is constantly turned out of Hollywood. These films should be inspiring and should give a sense of hope that someday boundaries will be broken and gaps will be closed, but urgency, reality, and challenging perspective should never be thrown by the wayside simply to leave a white audience with a smile on their faces. The Help, regrettably, never meets--let alone exceeds--these expectations, and simply relies on a very able cast to keep it afloat.
The trailers for this film tell all that the audience all that it needs to know about what they will see, think, and feel when going to see this movie, and looking around at the people in the theater I knew that this film would give them exactly what it promised. Based on the novel by the same name, the story looks at Skeeter (Emma Stone), the college educated liberal who comes back to Jackson, Mississippi to look after her sick mother and get a job writing in the local paper. When she returns, she finds herself disillusioned with the social dynamics of her town, and decides to write a book, in secret, about the injustices suffered by the black maids at the hands of their white, elitist bosses.
After much hard work she is finally able to convince Aibileen (Viola Davis), and Minny (Octavia Spencer) to help her with her book, at great personal risk to themselves, as that sort of fraternization was illegal in Mississippi at the time. From there it becomes an uphill battle as the three try to keep their project a secret from the white ladies of the town while trying to recruit their maids to help with the stories. And the plot goes where you might imagine....
I spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on this film and trying to decide why it was that I was disappointed. It was a good film, it made me laugh, it made me choke up, and there were parts that I was genuinely moved by what I saw on the screen, but nonetheless I left feeling oddly empty. This film glorifies the 'mammy' caricature, and so I asked myself why it was that these women who, when they were children were practically raised by these black women and loved them arguably more than their biological mothers, did they end up becoming the boss and exactly like their mothers? I suppose I hit that right on the head as the question is raised in the movie, but is never answered. I felt disappointed because I was left not learning anything knew about Jackson society or why it was that there was a shift from daughter to owner.
This film is simply like all of the other hackneyed, white and blacks band together for a common goal type of film, but it never takes the time to answer the questions that inevitably arise. There is conflict from the beginning, of course. Nearly all of the white characters except Skeeter, her cancer stricken mother, and the other ditsy white outsider Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain, in a role most unlike her one in The Tree of Life), are painted in broad strokes of the stereotypical, two-dimensional, racists who try at every point of the movie to reinforce the fact that they will not share a toilet seat with a black woman. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Hilly Holbrook, the face of evil for this circle of women who sets it upon herself to see that Skeeter and all of the black women of Jackson suffer every hardship they can. But like I said, this is established in the get-go. Very few new challenges arise, and it simply becomes a 137 minute trek to seeing Hilly and all of the other southern ladies get their comeuppance with the publishing of the book.
It is fun to see that happen, and like I was supposed to I enjoyed seeing the story unfold, but there was so much more that ought to have been tackled. I don't believe that authors or filmmakers should ever simply settle for entertainment, otherwise nobody learns anything, do they? As artists it is their responsibility to push the boundaries of what it is that people want to see, and then try to answer the questions that they raise with as much honesty as they can muster. I felt as though this film was something of an insult to the types of women that inspired Aibileen and Minny, because in the end it was Skeeter who got all of the glory and learned all of the lessons. It was an affirmation that white people need no longer feel guilty for the injustices that were suffered because I, as a white person, was obviously supposed to relate to Skeeter. The author of the book, and director, Tate Taylor, should have taken an editing eye to their work, and realized that they ought to have been more respectful of their subject matter. They sacrificed an honest approach to the material, and instead embellished a feel-good dramedy with unnecessary subplots with the mother, the love interest, and really spent too much time on the Hilly-Skeeter feud.
On the postives--which are strong enough to still earn this film a positive rating--there was terrific acting. I mean really terrific. Viola Davis as Aibileen will undoubtedly earn an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the hard, passive fighter who decides she needs to fight for a cause, even if her name goes unknown. Davis is unknown by most film goers which is a pity as she is one of the most talented actresses working today. I certainly hope that The Help, which has been seen by many more viewers than originally anticipated, will be the jumping off point for a career that will rival Meryl Streep's. There was a scene towards the end of the movie in which she quite literally took my breath away. Davis missed out on her much deserved Oscar in Doubt a few years ago, but I have hope that this scene, and half a dozen others will garner her the gold. There were other many fine performances all around, but it was she who held this film aloft. I can't remember a film since Funny Girl in which I pushed through the scenes that hard simply to gasp for air when a single actress came on screen. This was her film, and I hope she is rewarded for it.
This film should have been the year's Precious, instead it was the year's Blind Side.
3/4
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