Since Hollywood has virtually given up on making dramas, let alone serious female-centric films, the arrival of a quality release of some substance like The Help is remarkable. And in the summer yet.
This tale of black domestic workers in the homes of white families in Jackson, Miss., in pre-civil rights 1962, first gained fans from Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel. Now adapted and directed by Tate Taylor, a childhood friend of Stockett’s, the movie version should satisfy those readers, while widening the story’s following exponentially.
Taylor begins by softening the ride with comedy, as he risks depicting some of Jackson’s genteel racists as cartoonish caricature. But he soon turns matters to — pardon the expression — the dark side, as the stakes for these carefully subservient maids to participate in an oral history of their working conditions are high.
The film revolves around perky Emma Stone (Easy A, Crazy, Stupid Love) as college graduate and journalist wannabe “Skeeter” Phelan, but not so much that she dominates The Help over African-American actresses Viola Davis (Doubt) and Octavia Spencer as the first two maids to put their jobs, and perhaps their lives, on the line by agreeing to answer Skeeter’s interview questions about the two-tiered world of Jackson.
Davis projects great dignity and simmering rage as Aibileen Clark, masterful in the kitchen, substitute parent to her preoccupied employer’s children and full of bitter recollections of the cruel treatment that has been her daily existence. Spencer gets a breakthrough role as Minny Jackson, wrongfully accused of stealing from her employer, but resourceful in the way she exacts her revenge.
There are a few peripheral male characters, including a senator’s son who proposes marriage to Skeeter until he learns of her clandestine interview project. But for the most part, The Help revolves around the women of Jackson on both sides of the racial and social divide. And Taylor gets some choice supporting performances from such actresses as staunchly bigoted Bryce Dallas Howard, who is obsessed with separate and unequal bathroom facilities for the black help, and Jessica Chastain (Tree of Life) as a hopelessly unskilled housewife who secretly hires Minny to teach her the ways of southern cooking.
The always enjoyable Allison Janney plays Skeeter’s mother, perplexed and embarrassed by her daughter’s boat-rocking ambition. And late in the film, Cicely Tyson puts in an appearance as Constantine, the maid who raised Skeeter from childhood, and was abruptly banished from the Phelan home. It’s early by Oscar race standards, but expect some of the performance nominations to go to these women.
The Help is a compendium of small and large cruelties inflicted on hard-working women who were all but members of the family, except when barriers had to be raised. Ultimately, by telling their stories, those walls started to come down and Taylor’s film becomes a tale of triumph through the power of the truth.
THE HELP. Directed by Tate Taylor; Cast: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Cicely Tyson; Distributor: Dreamworks; Rated: PG-13. Now in area theaters.