The Help

Based on the eponymous novel of Kathryn Stockett, The Help is a deeply affecting coming of age story about the quiet brutality of racial prejudice in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi.

Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) stars as an unaccomplished but aspiring writer fresh out of university. Although initially naive about the full extent of black oppression she gradually comes to realise that her friends, while hypocritically denouncing ‘racism’, tacitly support it. In order to confront this problem she forms an unlikely friendship with Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer); two black maids with countless stories of their systematic exclusion from white society. Together they collaborate on a secret writing project to publish these stories to the world.

The result is a film which combines gritty realism about the structures of oppression with a mushy sentimentality that panders to white liberal sensibilities about race. Indeed, the film’s artful manipulation of stereotypes (most notably the ‘Magic Negro’ figure) and its depiction of black liberation as something that comes from the white middle-class (white woman writes stories about black women, white woman publishes, white men and women read, black women freed) are probably reasons for its considerable success among white audiences.

Nevertheless, this is a thoroughly engaging ‘feel-good’ drama packed with some terrific performances. In particular, Viola Davis excels as the unassuming Aibileen and Octavia Spencer provides some light comic relief as Minny. All in all then, while The Help may pack less of a punch than Paul Haggis’ Crash and Spielberg’s The Color Purple, it has enough humour and genuine warmth to deflect from its weaknesses.

REVIEWED AT CAMEO