Kathryn Stockett’s best selling novel, The Help, has been compared to another book that dealt with race in the south, Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. A film based on the latter starring Gregory Peck is also considered a classic, named one of the best movies of all time by the American Film Institute and included in the National Film Registry. Would the new film based on The Help rise to the same level?
Stockett, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, the setting for the The Help, requested that one of her childhood friends, Tate Taylor, write the screen play and direct the film. When we spoke with Stockett in March, 2010, while the movie was being cast, she said of Taylor: “ I could think of no better writer than Tate. We share the same view on Mississippi. It’s a defensive appreciation.” (Read the interview, “The Amazing Staying Power of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help”).
Stockett’s confidence in Tate has proved wise. From the script to the casting to the costumes to the setting, the film captures the tone and emotion of the book without becoming preachy or trite. Disregard the trailers now being shown on TV which depict the movie as a carefree romp through Jackson. There are light moments to be sure, but where the film succeeds best is by bringing us back to a painful time and place in our history when and where racism was thriving.
Emma Stone, who seems to be having a banner summer, also starring in the rom-com, Crazy, Stupid, Love, plays Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, who returns home after graduating from Ole Miss to pursue a writing career. Although she takes the demeaning job of ghostwriting the “Miss Myrna” housekeeping column for the local newspaper, she has higher aspirations to write a serious book. She soon finds her topic, interviewing African American maids about their feelings working for southern white women. Skeeter knows she will be ostracized by her family and friends if they discover her project. But the maids risk far more, with tension between the races erupting in violence against blacks. The assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers plays across the black and white TV screens in Jackson living rooms, emphasizing the dangers.
The black maids are, at first, reluctant to speak with Skeeter. They fear exposure, for sure, but many also feel loyalty towards some of the families and particularly towards the children they are raising. Aibileen Clark, played by Viola Davis, is the heart of the group and also the heart of the film. She absorbs the insults, insinuated and overt, from her employer, Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O’Reilly), and her bigoted group of club women, particularly Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard). After resisting Skeeter’s entreaties, Aibileen agrees to meetings in her home. The two are soon joined by Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), famous for her chocolate pie that will play a prominent role in the unraveling of the tight knit white women’s group.
After Minny is fired by Hilly, she takes a job with Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), the only white woman in town not under Hilly’s power. Celia is also an outsider, being labeled by Hilly and her group as “white trash.” In reality, Hilly is seeking revenge because her former boyfriend married Celia. Like two lost souls coming together, Celia and Minny form a bond that transcends the accepted relationship between blacks and whites in Jackson.
When Skeeter’s book is finally published, the shock waves are felt throughout Jackson. Although the author is identified only as “anonymous,” no one in Jackson is fooled. There are accusations, confrontations, and celebrations. Skeeter leaves to take a job in New York but the Jackson she leaves behind is changed forever, as is most of the country.
The predominantly female cast brings the novel to life. Emma Stone is perfect as the unconventional Skeeter, her mop of curly hair, like her outspoken personality, refusing to be tamed. Allison Janney plays Skeeter’s cancer-stricken mother, trying desperately to hold onto old southern values while struggling to understand her daughter’s rebelliousness. Bryce Dallas Howard (yes, she’s Ron’s daughter), succeeds in making Hilly everything we love to hate about racists who use charity work to raise their social status rather than to truly help others.
But it’s the African American actresses who give the film its soul. Viola Davis, in an Oscar-worthy performance, maintains a tough exterior even while absorbing the racial slurs being slung her way. Doesn’t she love the new, separate bathroom her employer has installed? Verbally she agrees, but we can see in her eyes and body language the hurt, humiliation, and, yes, defiance.
Octavia Spencer is simply wonderful as Minny. Initially worried about being interviewed by Skeeter, once Minny starts talking, she can’t stop. Spencer’s facial expressions register a wide range of feelings, whether she’s defying her white employer, comforting a distraught Celia, or getting up to mischief with her pies. Minny is a force and, ultimately, a survivor.
There are good performances by two film veterans, Sissy Spacek as Missus Walters, an aging southern woman, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s but still shaking things up, and Cicely Tyson, as Constantine Jefferson, seen in flashbacks as Skeeter’s nanny, whose disappearance was never adequately explained. When Skeeter discovers the truth, that story will conclude the book.
Midway in the film, Mary Steenburgen, who plays New York editor Elaine Stein, advises Skeeter to finish her book “before this whole Civil Rights thing blows over.” Thankfully, that didn’t happen. The Help reminds us how far we’ve come with still a very long way to go.
The Help
Opens August 10, 2011
