"The Help" Review

It's often hard to think about just how hard African-Americans had it in the Southern United States of the early 20th century. Mostly working menial jobs, treated poorly by upper-class whites and almost ubiquitously dirt-poor, African-Americans more than earned the rights granted to them by the Civil Rights Movement. But as The Help shows us, the battle for those rights was long, hard, and fraught with danger.

Aibileen Clark is a black maid living in Mississippi in the 1960s, where she looks after the children of rich white Southern mothers, whilst they are off doing whatever it is that rich white Southern mothers do instead of caring for their offspring. Aibileen is downtrodden and blatantly discriminated against in the racist South society, but seems quietly resigned to her fate until a young journalist named Skeeter comes along.

Skeeter wants to write a book about "The Help", and is hungry for interviewees. Unfortunately, if understandably, most of the maids in town are unwilling to speak with her, and initially, only Aibileen takes the plunge- but as the film goes on an the Civil Rights Movement grows and grows, more and more of The Help comes to Skeeter to tell her thee stories.

The central dynamic of The Help is between Skeeter and Aibileen, played respectively by Emma Stone and Viola Davis. Stone and Davis are fine apart but fantastic together, with the personalities bouncing off each other in a remarkably real way. Davis more than earned her Oscar nomination, giving Aibileen a rebellious soul, while at the same time never wavering from her sad, quiet nature. Aibileen is the source of many of the film's most poetic moments.

An criminally underused side character in The Help is Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer. Minny is everything that Aibileen is not- outspoken, strong-willed, and entirely unwilling to speak to Skeeter- at least, at first. Minny is a joy to watch whenever she's on screen, and is the source of a great scene where she gets back at her racist former boss (Bryce Dallas Howard) in the most hilariously vulgar way possible.

For all that The Help does right, there are also many things unfortunately wrong with it. As some critics from black community circles have pointed out, the film seems to have a bit of a "white people solve racism" mentality, with the maids mostly being portrayed as oddly uninterested in fighting for their rights until Skeeter introduces the idea. It also seems rather cartoonish in its portrayal of the 1960s South- sure, racist beliefs and people were common in that place and time, but some of the silliness that Skeeter's one-dimensional foils spew is rather hard to swallow.

The Help is a good movie that wants to be great. Racial issues are often difficult to portray on the screen without running into some unfortunate implications, and this film is unable to overcome that hurdle, ultimately to its detriment. There are still some fine performances and writing to be found, though, so I'd still give it a light recommendation.

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