The Help: The Movie

We got a sneak preview of the soon-to-be-released movie The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel. Shot in Greenwood, Mississippi, the movie takes you back to the 1960’s, a time of soda shops, shellacked hair-dos and shocking racism. Despite the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that mandated school integration in 1954, little has changed in 1960’s Jackson, where maids in starched uniforms commute from the wrong side of the tracks to cook, clean, shop and raise the children of the white folks across town. The two-hour film centers on the lives of three strong willed women in Mississippi in 1962.

Emma Stone plays the role of 22 year-old Skeeter, who has just graduated from “Ole Miss” and is trying to start her career in journalism, which was a man's world in the South and everywhere else. She is given the job of answering questions about household tips for the local newspaper and seeks help from her friend's black maid, Aibileen. Aibileen, played by Viola Davis, is a strong caring woman who has raised 17 white children but has lost her own son in an accident. She provides housekeeping advice for the column and the two women develop a friendship. Skeeter sees the injustice in the treatment of black maids by their white employers and recognizes that in the era of the Civil Rights movement, the help has a story that needs to be told. She pitches the idea to a publisher up North and after much persuasion a reluctant Aibileen agrees to be interviewed. She is later joined by another black maid named Minnie, played by the sassy and defiant Octavia Spencer.

As the film develops, the audience learns about the lives of these three woman as well as Skeeter's mother Charlotte, (Allison Janney of the West Wing), and Skeeter's evil "friend" Hilly, played by Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minnie embark on their top-secret project to write a tell-all book on the lives of black maids in Jackson. Skeeter must keep her work under cover for fear of incurring the wrath of friends and family, and Aibileen and Minnie must hide their involvement to protect their families, jobs, and their own lives. It’s a time when police feel free to beat blacks who challenge social norms and the specter of the Klu Klux Klan looms large. Despite fear of reprisals, they move forward and the finished project changes all their lives in ways that they never expected.

Minnie provides one of the film's funniest moments when she shows up at the home of Hilly, the queen of the Junior League, who has drafted “The Home Help Sanitation Initiative” to require white employers to build outdoor facilities for their black help. She recently fired Minnie, who has worked for the family for generations, punishing her for using the indoor bathroom instead of the maids’ privy. Minnie’s revenge provides a lesson that neither Hilly nor the audience will ever forget.

The film will make you angry about the injustices that existed in the 1960’s and incredulous that just a few decades ago, during our lifetimes, African Americans were treated as property by generations of whites in the South. One of the black maids in the movie revealed that she had been “given” to the white family where her mother worked, when her mother passed away. Particularly moving were the close bonds between the maids and the white children they loved – the maids stood in for detached mothers -- teaching their charges to speak, use the potty and to believe in themselves.

Most touching is the relationship that forms between Skeeter and the courageous maids who are the subjects of her book. When the story is published, it turns their world around, humiliating the oppressors, liberating the oppressed and sending Skeeter off to a new literary life, a world away in New York.

The three women exhibit grace, courage and wisdom during this difficult period of change in the South and Director Tate Taylor has provided a captivating visual interpretation of life in Mississippi at the dawn of a new era.