1/25/2012

"Sentenced by the color of their skin"

Title: The Help
Year: 2011
Genre: Drama
Director: Tate Taylor
Writer: Tate Taylor, Kathryn Stockett (based on her homonymous novel)
Runtime: 137min
Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer
Produc.: DreamWorks SKG, Reliance Entertainment, Participant Media, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ, 1492 Pictures, Harbinger Pictures
Budget: $25 million approx.

The Help takes place in Mississippi in the early 60's, when Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns from college with the goal of becoming a writer and gets a job in a local newspaper. Shortly later things will take a twist, when Eugenia decides to write about the life of the color employees, in a society that is extremely racist, and for which the young girl gets these discriminated women to speak out to her, a white girl.
Before watching It, it had being was a while since I ran into any similar movie. I remember The Mission, with Robert de Deniro, a film that I saw a few months ago and the only example I can come up to as close, where instead of dealing with contempt for the black population, it was the same but with the Native Americans of the eighteenth century.
I must admit that my knowledge on the subject is very scarce, so anytime I see myself in front of a Hollywood production of this style, I have no choice but to absorb all that it tells me to make me aware of it. And yet, even with The Help I continue to keep in mind two elements. Number 1: The reality of the United States in that decade was far worse than it can be seen in this film. Number 2: No matter how successful it is the general description that is provided; The Help is not based on the diaries of a black woman employee, nor is it based on some newspaper article of the time, but in a novel. This implies that the author, Kathryn Stockett, after collecting a certain amount of information about the period, evidently decided to give a personal touch and create a story of short cuts and fictional characters, but yes, based on a very harsh reality.
Tate Taylor here allows us to delight in splendid performances, especially as in the case of Viola Davis as Aibileen Clark and Octavia Spencer as Minny Jackson. Both represent the weight of being an employee, at a time when being black was the same as saying that that you where brought into the world to be an obedient cleaning instrument and to say, "Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma'am" to your employer.
Young Emma Stone, on the other hand, complies with the decisive role. She is responsible for openly disclose a truth, that most would only prefer to be collaterally aware of. However, when she asks Aibileen what if she doesn´t like something of what she´s going to tell (which is the same as saying: What if what I have to say about your people offends yours?), Skeeter is itself lucid enough to answer that whatever she thinks about it does not matter.
It is like this that The Help is very concerned about showing us how many employees have to endure the insolence of their employers. Such is the case of this people, the whites, educated under the belief of being members of a superior race. Instead, blacks were inferior, to the point of thinking that they carried different and even worse diseases, and that it would be all an atrocity that an employee uses the same toilet as their employers. Therefore, in a scene Minny feels the need to go to the bathroom, on a stormy day, for what she should cross the courtyard of the house of Mrs. Hilly Holbrook, who is an abomination of women, much more racist and ruthless than many. When Missus Walters (Sissy Spacek), mother of Hilly, offers to use hers, her daughter is shown in complete disagreement, but Minny secretly decides to accept the offer. However, Hilly will spy and called through the door to ensure that Minny is not making use of the house bathroom, to which Minny, tired of bearing with her, responds by pulling the tank and putting an end to his days as a maid. But revenge will be terrible and will be announced when Skeeter´s work gets published.
Something I saw as positive in this film was it covered different points of view and did not reduce them to "blacks who hate whites, and whites who hate blacks." It is true that the characters, for example, Holbrooks Hilly and her husband, were built under the stereotype of the extreme racist, which lacks the power of reasoning, overcome entirely by baseless hatred. However, we´ve got Leefolt Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly), a woman also raised under such a complete separation between whites and blacks, except that at no time we sense that she feels that sadistic hatred felt by Hilly.
We can also include Charlotte Phelan (Allison Janney), of who little is known throughout the film, except that she is recovering from cancer and that for several years now she´s been hiding a secret that could turn her daughter into an enemy. Then, almost at the very end we learn that she was not actually an evil woman, but a victim of circumstances and conflicts of interest.
All in all, and leaving aside the elements that give the film quality, I think it´s weakness still lie more than anything in the way a little simplistic sometimes the story is told. Perhaps it would have been better more aggressiveness in the conflict between whites and blacks.

My rating: 8/10


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