The Help (2011) dir, Tate Taylor

Rating: 4/5

I'll start off like a headline cliche, and beg your forgiveness, but it seems appropriate to this particular picture. The Help is a moving, funny and heart-wrenching film. I cringe at these sorts of descriptions usually, but The Help uses these emotions so effectively, and quite evenly, that it's worth mentioning each.

Reminding me a little of Spielberg's beautiful The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker's fantastic novel, this movie is based on Kathryn Stockett's book, which is rather popular. In Jackson, Mississippi in the early '60s, every white child is raised lovingly by their family's black maid, while every white parent allows the maids to handle their children, but not to use their bathroom. Racial tensions are high, and subject to many discriminatory laws, and the black women suffer abuse at the hands of their snooty employers.

Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) returns home to Jackson having graduated from college, and sets about her career as a writer: her first job is answering domestic questions in the local newspaper. She asks her friends' maids to help her write the articles, and they volunteer copious household tips. But at home, Skeeter's beloved family maid Constantine has left mysteriously, and her stubborn mother (Alison Janney) won't give her a straight answer, returning her attention to the wonderful women in town raising white children.

She befriends two inspirational women, Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) and Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and as they share tales of their lives as domestics for white people, Skeeter sees potential for not only a compelling book, but for a chance to change the narrow minds of the infuriating people who surround her.

It could be argued that Minny, Aibileen and Skeeter are all leading roles: each woman has her own story, with the makers actually giving them an equal share of the screen time. Emma Stone is pleasant to watch, but the show is stolen, melted down and made into gold by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. 

Minny- headstrong and zero-tolerance- is fired by the local butter-wouldn't-melt-bitch Hilly Holbrook for using the indoor whites-only bathroom during a hurricane. With a thoroughly damaged reputation by the time Hilly is finished with her, Minny is hired by the only other nice (and therefore despised) woman in town, Celia Foote, to whom she passes her housekeeping tips, and her most fragrant recipes, all passed off as Celia's own work by the time her husband gets home. Spencer creates a delightful character, bringing the majority of the film's comic material to life, while embodying a woman who has seen it all and done it all.

The beautiful Aibileen is so tender and loving, yet maternally firm, having seen seasons of white children she loved grow into their cruel parents, despite everything. She has a tragic past, and needs the children she cares for to reignite her passion for life. Davis and Spencer make the movie what it is. Both received Oscar nominations, Spencer winning Best Supporting Actress, and both deliver charming, engaging, emotional performances in easily one of the best films of 2011.

So, there is the moving: the growing sisterhood between the women in Jackson; the funny: the hideously hilarious comeuppance of Hilly...and her mother's reaction; and the heart-wrenching: Aibileen's final sorrow as she is forced away from her beloved white child. The Help is a wonderful, emotional experience, which uplifts as it saddens, and tickles the funnybones as it yanks the heartstrings.