Returns Policy
If you are unhappy with your purchase, you can return it to us within 14 days. More details
MovieMail's Review
On the surface, The Help, Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel, might strike you as the kind of thing that Academy voters always love come Oscar time, a mawkish overly-sentimental story of a highly politicised period in American politics that manages to eschew any of the genuine darkness of the time. And yet, dismissing The Help because it isn’t Mississippi Burning does the film a disservice: here is a story that gets to the heart of the long history of American inequality in a way that can be understood by all of the family, which conversely helps transform it into that rarest of beasts: a brave studio pic.
The always watchable Emma Stone plays Skeeter, an ambitious young writer looking to make a name for herself in the shark-infested waters of the New York publishing scene all the way from her home in Mississippi. Focusing her attention on the help, the horde of bussed-in mamies who spend their lives raising the children of well-to-do white women, enduring all manner of cruelty from their employers along the way, Skeeter struggles to encourage two local maids – Abilene Clark and Minny Jackson (played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer) to tell their stories. Abilene and Minny are very much the heart of a film that earnestly appeals to the heart. Minny, in particular, exacts a revenge on her former employer (Bryce Dallas Howard in vicious form) and delivers perhaps the most stinging line in the film in a scene guaranteed to leave you simultaneously nauseous and amused.
The Help really comes into its own in the way it investigates small town mores and maps the provincial rivalries that often help drive the quietly insidious prevailing racism. If you took the evil gossips from Edward Scissorhands and transplanted them to a backyard down the street from To Kill a Mockingbird, you’d have a good idea of what to expect. You won’t see anyone lynched in The Help, and you won’t see any men donning pointy white hats. What you will see, to paraphrase Harper Lee, is real courage: the courage that comes from knowing you’re licked before you begin 'but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what'.
Deleted Scenes with introduction by director Tate Taylor
A Senator's Son
Keep on Walkin'
The Living Proof Music Video
Audio Described English.
Film Description
An affecting and inspirational drama, The Help is set against the backdrop of the 1960s American civil rights movement and based on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett.
It is 1964 and racism is rife in Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter (Emma Stone), the strong-willed daughter of a well-to-do family, returns to the town from college to take up a role at the local newspaper. However, working as a 'homemaker hints' columnist in the paper is by no means the extent of Skeeter's ambitions. Disturbed by the negative attitude of her friend (Bryce Dallas Howard) towards her house staff, Skeeter decides to write a book chronicling the experiences of the black maids who have spent much of their lives serving her and her contemporaries. Initially, the maids seem reluctant and suspicious. However, when the much-respected Aibileen (Viola Davis) comes forward to offer her story, the floodgates open and the women take the opportunity to make themselves heard.
Based on the 2009 novel by Kathryn Stockett, Tate Taylors The Help depicts the patience, loyalty, and courage of black maids who cooked, cleaned, and raised the childr... more >
Based on the 2009 novel by Kathryn Stockett, Tate Taylors The Help depicts the patience, loyalty, and courage of black maids who cooked, cleaned, and raised the children of white women for many decades and who were often subject to abuse and humiliation by their employers because of their race.
Emma Stones performance as a young writer who records the stories of several maids in a book she is writing plays a prominent, if not decisive, role in the film, yet it is mostly carried by the brilliant work of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer whose performances as Aibileen and Minny are at the core of The Helps ability to stir deep human emotion.
Filmed in Greenwood, Mississippi but set in Jackson, Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt, aided by Production Designer Mark Ricker, creates a realistic and often beautiful picture of the decaying South. As the film opens, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) tells us that she is a maid like her mother before her and has raised seventeen white children as their surrogate mother. The film is Aibileens story as well as that of her friend Minny (Octavia Spencer) as told to young Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), a college graduate who comes back to Mississippi with the intention of becoming a writer.
Bravely facing the danger of being seen in close contact with a white woman, Aibileen agrees to talk to Skeeter, writing down what she wants to say rather than responding to questions. Soon, Minny agrees to join the project followed later by other maids, fed up with the way they are being treated.
Though The Help is not an all-inclusive picture of the times, it does what it sets out to do to educate and entertain a generation largely unaware of the conditions of African-American women in the South before the movement for equality gained a foothold. While it may be sentimental, when Aibileen looks a little girl in the eyes and tells her: You is kind. You is smart. You is important, every tear that may be shed has been dutifully earned.
< less
