The Help (2011)

A deeply touching human story filled with humour and heartbreak is rare in movies these days, especially just after a summer filled with comic book and Sci-Fi productions. That’s what makes The Help such a pleasant surprise.

Kathryn Stockett’s novel faced some sizeable barriers before being published (receiving over 60 rejection letters). Even when it finally found a publisher, this book still riled a few book critics, who thought Stockett to be a bit crazy: a white woman from Mississippi thinking she could write a book from the point of view of black maids serving white folks in the 1960s. However, the book touched a nerve with the general populace, causing a reaction which helped it to become one of the best-selling novels in recent years.

The film begins with Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) returning home from college to find that her family’s maid, who basically raised her, is no longer working with them. No one talks about it, but Skeeter is determined to discover what happened. Meanwhile, she hunts for a job and manages to procure one from the local paper, but it’s a cleaning column. She enlists the help of Aibileen (Viola Davis), a maid who works for one of the circle of friends Skeeter knows.

Skeeter is appalled by the attitude of her friends towards the help, so decides to write a book from the perspective of the maids, sharing their stories and their point of view on life.

The film version of The Help, directed and written for the screen by the inexperienced Tate Taylor- at Stockett’s request- does full justice to the book. The film is short on style and technique, but compensates with general emotional force.

The actors are all brilliant. To start with there’s Viola Davis: playing Aibleen, the housekeeper who raised 17 white children from various families but is still reeling from the accidental death of her own son. Then there’s Octavia Spencer who plays Aibileen’s best friend Minny Jackson, who isn’t one to hold back and gives the film its many laughs. Both performances are excellent and deserve an Oscar nomination at the very least.

We also have fine performances from Bryce Dallas Howard who plays racist boss Hilly Holbrook and Jessica Chastain who plays Celia Foote. Jessica plays the role with such warmth and feeling that it’s hard not to love her straight away.

Finally, we have the film’s catalyst Skeeter, Emma Stone, taking on the trickiest role with exceptional talent. Stone is subtly effective at showing all sides of Skeeter; from her passion of writing to her naivety at dating.

The Help is a story with many other stories attached to it. Tate Taylor obviously worked hard to try and deliver them all without making the audience confused with the detail. The dialogues are fantastic and the background stories on all the main characters are slowly revealed to keep the audience interested.

The Help takes the audience on an emotional ride through the lives lived in a culture aptly referred to as ‘hell on Earth’ in one scene. This is one moving film which does not bow to sentimentality. The Help has everything you could want from a film.