I will admit, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to enjoy this film. So far I haven’t been able to articulate the genre of film that I tend to gravitate towards, but I can definitely say that this wasn’t it. But my mom was interested in it, so I had to give it a fair chance. After all, I always advocate going out of your comfort zone. Unfortunately for me, this time my gut instinct was correct. The Help has some serious problems.
This movie is supposed to be about the racism that the black maids experience in pre-civil rights Louisiana, with an interesting twist about these maids’ relationships with the children of their employers. The plot kicks off with Skeeter, played by Emma Stone, coming back from college and finding out that her family maid Constantine, who practically raised her, has mysteriously disappeared. An aspiring journalist, she is stirred to interview black maids about raising white children, starting with one of her friend’s maids, Aibileen (played by Viola Davis). Soon Aibileen’s friend Minny (played by Octavia Spencer), who has been fired for daring to use her family’s bathroom instead of the one for the help outside, becomes a part of Skeeter’s project as well.
But as much as the film tries to convince us that Aibileen is the main character by having her as the focus of the first and last scenes, it’s really about Skeeter, which is terribly disappointing. The beginnings of the civil rights movement are only shown through brief glimpses of TV news or in one scene where Aibileen is forced to get off a bus when it heads through a crime scene where a civil rights activist was shot, whereas we have to slog through Skeeter’s romantic life. This film falls right into the “White People To The Rescue” trope that really needs to die already.
The performances in this film have been lauded even by their detractors, and I agree to a certain extent. Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Emma Stone are all wonderful, although Octavia Spencer does at some point have to play the Sassy “Mmm hmmm” Black Lady role. But who really stood out to me was Jessica Chastain, who plays my favorite character in the film, Celia. She takes on Minny after she is fired because she can’t cook and is afraid her husband might leave her otherwise, and she’s shunned by the rest of the community for being tacky and rumors that she stole somebody’s boyfriend. Her growing relationship with Minny feels genuine, sweet, and funny, but unfortunately is just a side story.
And that’s the big problem with this film. There’s too much Wise Black Servant and White Person With Radical Views For The Time and especially the Terrible White Villian, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who seems like she should really be the leader of the popular girls in a high school comedy. Skeeter’s role as White Person With Radical Views is also frustrating, especially since I have heard she wasn’t so liberal in the book. But the stock stereotypes don’t stop; what convinces Aibileen to tell her story to Skeeter? A sermon about Courage and Standing Up For What Is Right, of course! The ending is especially annoying. After Skeeter gains success and escapes racist Louisiana for New York, the film tries to make us cry at the end by having a scene where three characters are crying, one of them an abandoned toddler. But it’s supposed to also be a happy cry, because Aibileen quits, escaping the most terrible white people, and walks off into the sunset knowing she is free. Roll credits.
And that’s the last we see of Aibileen, as if that’s enough closure for her. She lost her job and is (figuratively) walking off to who knows where, but her voiceover is liberated, so she’ll be okay, right? I was told the book gives her a much more definitive happy ending, but seriously?
The sad thing is, The Help is clearly trying to say something meaningful about having to raise kids that aren’t your own and women’s roles in society in general, but it really gets bogged down in sentimental and overdone bullshit.
