The Help – Benevolent white folks save the day

Poor Kathryn Stockett. How exciting it must have been for her to have her book optioned into a movie before she even had a publisher. It’s every author’s dream. However, having said movie completely miss the point of your book? The one that came directly from your own experiences growing up? That must be a nightmare.

The Help is undoubtedly going to be a hit. People are going to love it. The folks who were in my packed screening certainly did, even applauding at the end of the film. I, however, was left with a feeling of confusion. How did a book that took such pains to capture the tension of pre-Civil Rights Mississippi and showcase women, both black and white, who found strength from within themselves to rise above their station in life, turn into a film full of sassy one-liners, a fright wig, and benevolent white women coming to save the day?

From the moment we’re supposed to believe that Emma Stone is ugly, it becomes impossible to take The Help seriously. Luckily, the film doesn’t seem to want to be taken seriously, so it all works out. While the book does have moments of levity (The “Terrible Awful” story involving a pie with a “special” ingredient hasn’t changed), it is only to break up the tension of the changing tide in the Civil Rights movement that underscores the entire story. In the film version, the pie is a running joke; a frivolous gag thrown into a mostly frivolous movie.

In the film, the main characters, Minny and Abileen, two black maids working for white families in 1960, openly mock their bosses while at work. They titter in the kitchen as if there are no real consequences. As if these white women couldn’t ruin their lives in a second if they felt like it.

“Womens, they ain’t like men. A woman ain’t gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn’t pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn’t come burn my house down.

No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with you.”

That’s an excerpt from The Help. Those two paragraphs lay out exactly what the relationship is between the white women and the help. It’s not frothy, and it’s not fun. Kathryn Stockett may not have done a perfect job of capturing the experience of being a black maid during this tumultuous time, but she didn’t make a mockery of it either. She was conscious, perhaps hyper-conscious of not making it seem like white folks swooped in and saved the day. This distinction was lost in the film.

Emma Stone’s Skeeter was an outspoken activist. She thought the way the maids were being treated was wrong, and she wanted to give them a voice. The Skeeter in the book was an accidental activist. Like most benign white women (as opposed to the malevolent Hilly), she never really gave the plight of the black maids much thought and stumbled into her position after exhausting other routes of getting a book deal.

Minny, whose strength and spark in every aspect of her life was in stark contrast to her role in an abusive relationship, was reduced to the sassy comic relief. How Stockett must have cringed when the film shows Minny only gathering the strength to leave the abusive Leroy after her boss, Celia, cooked her a dinner. The movie Minny needed a white woman’s fried chicken to make her realize that she didn’t need Leroy. In the book, she only needed herself and the voice she had gained from telling her stories.

Movie Minny danced around and praised the Lord after receiving twelve dollars from book sales. Book Minny, along with the other maids, gave all of their money to put Yule May’s children through college after Hilly had her sent to prison. The maids in the book didn’t need white women to save them; the maids in the book only needed Skeeter to help them realize that they had the strength within themselves all along.

As much as I was saddened by the direction The Help took, it’s clear that Tate Taylor had only the best intentions. Although the execution was a little tone-deaf, the heart was there. This is what allowed the female cast of The Help to shine. As much as I disliked large chunks of this film, it was heartening to see another movie with an all-female cast that featured stellar performances, so close on the heels of Bridesmaids.

Viola Davis is incredible as Abileen Clark, the maid who is raising her 17th white child to love herself despite her inattentive mother. She transcends any issues with the material and gets to the point that Stockett intended. No matter what she says, you know that Abileen doesn’t need anyone to save her.

Despite being largely reduced to sassy comebacks, Octavia Spencer also shows a depth and a breadth to her performance that isn’t on the written page. She’s a perfect Minny, and she deserved to have her character written better.

Emma Stone, likewise, does the best with what she has. Her natural charm and spunk is perfect for Skeeter, but come on. She’s Emma freakin’ Stone. When she talked about understanding what it was like to have a mother think she was ugly, I had to guffaw. I mean, seriously.

However, The Help‘s real standout was Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays Hilly. Her sweet face belies the evil inside of her heart, and she plays each note with a cold precision. In a movie that is largely devoid of the necessary fear of the times, Howard sneaks it in and gives the audience the only hint of those tools, “sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray.”

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Aug 10, 2011 @ 00:01 EST5EDT