MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

The Help   Rated PG-13

Directed by Tate Taylor.  Starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis

Photo © DreamWorks Studio
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

I know people who love Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel on which the film The Help is based.  If a movie is measured by its faithfulness to the source material, this film succeeds in clicking off all of the major plot points.

Unfortunately, this film version (directed by a personal friend of the author, who purchased movie rights before the manuscript was sold) is a bit of a shambles, missing more emotional moments than it hits, and edited in a somewhat pedestrian fashion.  It’s 2 ½ hours long, but still feels like it rushes through the material.

The Help tells the story of Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Stone), a recent college graduate who returns home to Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. Since she’s a journalism major, Skeeter gets a job with the local paper as a Heloise-type columnist of household hints.  There’s no one better to help her with her column than Aibileen (Davis), her best friend’s housekeeper.  Skeeter begins to look at life with a different pair of eyes and becomes aware of the racism in her circle of girlfriends and the growing tension in the South between African-Americans and whites.  She listens to Aibileen’s stories and pitches a book idea to a New York publisher to write a book filled with first person memoirs of the hired help.  Soon, Skeeter is listening to the stories of Minny (Octavia Spencer), a friend of Aibileen’s, who has experienced more mistreatment from former employers.

The book did a great job sharing the stark reality of racism in America’s recent history, but it had 500 pages to tell its story.  The film is designed to be a “feel good” movie about a terrible injustice, and it comes off as sentimental rather than provocative.

That’s not to say that there’s not good acting in this film.  Davis, Spencer, Stone and Jessica Chastain give great performances that make the movie worth seeing.

But what is gained by the publication of Skeeter’s book?  At the end of the movie, white households in Jackson still have the black hired help.  The racial divide still stands.

Speaking of racial divides, I continue to be astonished at how movie attendance is segregated by choice.  Over the years as I have attended films with a primarily African-American cast, from Tyler Perry comedy-dramas to black biopics like Malcolm X, the audience is 98% African-American.  The packed audience for The Help seemed to be virtually all white. 

We shouldn’t be feeling all that good yet.

Pitchfork/Halo Ratings:

Four halos: A compassionate depiction of racial prejudice and individual empowerment.

Three pitchforks: Racism, some crude language, scatological humor.

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