Emma Stone is such a cutie, right? For her role in The Help, Stone ditched her signature shiny red tresses for a head of spunky blonde curls, and in doing so, finally managed to break out of her type-cast of a sassy American teenager living in suburbia (she’s finally an adult on-screen as well as off!). Fortunately, the hairstyle change is enough to make this transition believable, and Stone’s acting is good enough to carry the weight of her part.
The Help, directed by Tate Taylor, is an adapted version of Kathryn Stockett’s novel by the same name. The movie follows the growing frustration of Eugenia “Skeeter” Phalen (Emma Stone) when she returns to her hometown, Jackson, Mississippi after graduating from college. Upon her arrival, she discovers the family maid, the woman who raised her while her real mother was busy socializing, no longer works for the family. Despite Skeeter’s pressing, neither of her parents will give her a reason why. Uninterested in her mother’s hopes that she’ll find a boyfriend, Skeeter finds a job at the local newspaper, writing a housework column, that leads her to consult a friend’s maid, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), for help. While spending time around this woman and the family she works for, Skeeter cannot help but notice the obscene racism and abuse that exists in their society, propagated in large part by her good childhood friend, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). Soon her writing evolves into a series of interviews, and as racial tensions increase, so do the maids’ interest in letting their stories be heard.
The movie covers a wide array of topics, including racism and sexism, but above all else it explores the relationships that exist between women, whether they be friends, family, employer and employee, black, or white. The relationships between the housewives of Jackson, their interactions with their maids, the bond between the maids, the relationships of the white women with their mothers, the relationship of the black women with their children, and the way the way those patterns repeat themselves is really what this movie is all about. Racial tension and sexism are definitely present as well, but they seem to act primarily as vehicles for the development of character bonds.
There’s a lot going on in this movie – perhaps even too much. I saw a late showing at Tower Theaters, just across the street, and even in an empty theatre with no distractions I had a hard time keeping track of everything. In addition to the complicated web of relationships and keeping all the characters straight, there’s the individual stories of the maids (often shown as flashbacks), the side story of Skeeter’s love life, another side story of a wealthy white woman who is made an outsider to the upper-class full-skirted world of Jackson by society’s elites, the occasional return to Skeeter’s newspaper job, background stories for all the main characters, and to top it all off, historical milestones periodically inserted into the film to give it some sort of timeline. It’s a lot to process even when written out in text as it is here, but even harder to take in when it’s all coming at you at once on a big screen.
The Helpis definitely worth seeing, if only because Stone and Davis give their performances everything they’ve got. Their bond is believable and their characters seem real, not played-out or stereotypical. The story as a whole is interesting and often unexpected, and the film is beautifully made. Somehow Taylor has included hilarity, sentiment, truth, Southern sass and Southern class in his direction of the film, and despite it’s few shortcomings, overall it hits home. If you’re at all interested in civil rights, underdog movies, a feel-good film, or just a reason to go spend a night in the dark comfort of Tower Theaters, The Help is worth your time.