The Help

12A

Based on the 2009 best-selling novel by author Kathryn Stockett, ‘The Help’ is a remarkable and emotional film that takes audiences back into 1960s Jackson Mississippi, before the civil rights movement. ‘The Help’ having a deeper meaning other than just being a Hollywood film, displays on the big screen the racial segregation of whites and blacks, which not only was crime but a created illusion.

Skeeter (Emma stone) a young, white, ambitious writer is asked to write about an issue that disturbs her. Having been raised by a maid she is interested in finding out how African American maids feel about raising white children who then  grow up to be their boss, she conducts secret interviews with maids to achieve her goal despite the social problems and illegal dangers that it will cause for her.

Her first point of contact is Aibileen (Viola Davis) who is the first to present her story, bold enough to admit that as a girl she always knew she would be a maid as her mother was, and her grandmother a house slave. Not that there is any difference between the two. Davis effectively plays a powerful character but we are still able to see the struggle and will to fight, her willingness to repeatedly tell a toddler that “you is kind, you is smart, you is important” brings more than a tear to an eye but a life lesson to give a person a deserving chance.

Minny (Octavia Spencer), Aibilieen’s courageous best friend, brings humour to the film as while it can be quite intense; audiences are still made to laugh with the character’s pain. Minny learns of Skeeter’s proposed book and rather than keep her mouth shut in fear, decides to open up with her story, which enables many other maids to do the same. Minny is a representation of a black woman not only dealing with racism but domestic abuse while also having to raise 5 children of her own.

The bunch of white women who are all raised by black maids, appear more racist than the generation before them and unable to have voices for themselves while being under the influence of Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) a malicious cruel woman who tries to politically enforce that there be separate bathrooms for white homes and their black employees with her ignorant belief that black people carry diseases.

While the film is mainly an all women cast it can be easily mistaken as being a ‘chick flick’ but rather  this film picks on one’s conscience, while also giving lessons on how to cook a feast full of fried chicken and pie. It’s very easy to put people under one roof and assume that they experience the same thing but rather that they experience different for the same reasons.  ‘The Help’ presents a perspective we have never seen before.