Sitting down to see “The Help” during its third week in release, I was surprised to see the theater filling up. Most films peak their during opening weekend and then drop away, but “The Help” has been gaining momentum. Clearly, word of mouth has been strong.
Allow me to add my voice to the chorus singing its praises.
As you read this, “The Help” will be entering its fourth week in distribution, and my guess is it’s still going to be packing in viewers. That’s because it’s the kind of movie people are telling others to see, and are going back to see a second time and taking others with them. Some critics have described “The Help” as a feel-good movie. But while it contains humor and warmth, it also offers heartbreaking drama. And it ends with a courageous scene that had most of the people in the theater walking out in silence. I wonder if the filmmakers were tempted to conclude with a rousing song, but instead maintained their artistic integrity by practicing what they had just preached.
The message of “The Help” is that acts of courage bring about change. This is well-tread ground, but it’s ground each generation needs to revisit. There are groups in our society advocating change, and it might encourage them to look back and see that others who pressed forward against seemingly insurmountable odds reshaped the world into the one in which we live today. Besides, the makers of “The Help” have delivered a movie so well written, acted, and directed, so entertaining, and so eloquent and powerful, it could have been about the wonders of Crisco, and it would’ve worked. (Those of you who have seen the movie are smiling; those of you who have not need to go at your earliest convenience to get in on the joke.)
The setting is also familiar: the culture of racism in the South in the Sixties. I hardly feel compelled to provide a history lesson, and neither does the movie; instead, it simply begins its story, and sprinkles in bits of history along the way. Some critics have maligned “The Help” for being historically inaccurate, but I don’t recall seeing or hearing anything that should give an historian serious pause. Feel free to correct me, and please cite your references. The story centers on the efforts of Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a progressive young journalist, to document the plight of black maids in her hometown of Jackson, Miss. She arrives home fresh from Ole Miss and lands a job at the local newspaper writing a cleaning advice column. When she sees the disrespect with which her childhood friends are treating their black maids, she decides to write a book that tells the perspective of the maids.
Aibileen, a middle-aged black woman who’s spent her life raising white children, and who recently lost her son, is the first to speak out, although it takes a lot of convincing. Minny Jackson, a maid with a reputation for being difficult, steps up next. The nemesis of all three is Hilly Holbrook, an entitled racist shrew that runs the local Junior League and has every other white woman in town wrapped around her little finger.
Other than some slight narrative awkwardness (Aibileen recount parts of the movie from a first person perspective, while other parts are told from an impartial third-person perspective), the only real shortcomings of the “The Help” are its hackneyed characters, especially Holbrook, who seems a little too anal retentive about segregation, even by the standards of the Sixties. Fortunately, actress Bryce Dallas Howard glosses over the failings of the otherwise terrific script by delivering what will certainly be an Oscar nominated performance. “The Help” is an instant classic. Moreover, it deserves all of the success it’s experiencing. I believe it contains scenes so well conceived, they have the ability to enter our long term pop culture memory, much like the scene in “Forrest Gump” in which Jenny cries “Run, Forrest, run!” (Those of you who have seen “The Help” are smiling; those who have not need to go as your earliest convenience to get in on the joke.)
Rated PG-13 for thematic materials. Three-and-a-half stars out of four.