Film Review | The Help

An instant bestseller when it was first published in 2009, Kathryn Stockett's fictional expose of the travails on black maids in 1960s Mississippi is a recipe for a rollicking emotional gumbo - there's the cosy period feel coupled with a crusade for moral righteousness, all wrapped up in that smug feeling - so familiar to fans of Mad Men - that, naturally, We're So Much Better Now.

Of course none of this should get in the way of enjoying the novel's equally successful Hollywood adaptation, as what we get is a warm story of genteel struggle and survival that's difficult not to be seduced by - dubious political underpinnings and emotional manipulation notwithstanding.

In the heart of bigoted-as-it-gets Jacksonville, Mississippi, black maids are not only treated as glorified slaves, but are also regarded with suspicion by some of their affluent masters.

Prime offender in the latter category is prissy princess Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), who heads a committee which has as one of its aims the initiative to install separate bathrooms for 'the help'.
 
But Hilly's friend Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan (Emma Stone), has a decidedly different attitude towards the plight of the maids of Jacksonville, and after she returns home from university to discover that the maid who raised her has been fired (her ailing mother Charlotte (Allison Janney) fails to provide an adequate explanation) she embarks on a mission to tell the story from the maids' perspective.

Landing a job at a local newspaper, Skeeter is assigned a regular cleaning column, and being inexperienced in housework, asks Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), her friend's maid, for help.
 
But after learning more about the stoic but sad Aibileen's life (she had just recently lost a son) Skeeter begins to think that the maids deserve a full-length book detailing their story. But although a publisher shows interest - and imposes a very challenging deadline - Skeeter discovers that her mission may be more dangerous than she could have imagined... and apart from Aibileen, the only other willing collaborator brave enough to help her in telling her story is the sassy troublemaking maid Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer).
 
Actor-turned-director Tate Taylor brings the novel to life with a vintage panache. They hardly make them like this anymore - meaning big, earnest themes told with heart firmly on sleeve, a primary-colour palette that you can't help but get sucked into and warm, sympathetic performances offset by equally intense, villainous grotesques.
 
But there is some room for ambiguity - Skeeter's mother turns out to be a surprisingly nuanced character as the plot develops and Jessica Chastain's bimbotic Celia Foote shows that Jacksonville's social injustices weren't (literally) black and white.
 
But despite the large cast of characters, Stone and Davis have to do most of the heavy lifting. Thankfully, the duo are more than up to the task. Stone has been the alternative 'It' girl for the past year or so - Easy A cemented this, while Crazy Stupid Love used it as a handy condiment, where she was employed to add some zest to the romcom.

Here, however, she gets to do real drama, and it's a pleasure to see her branch out because she remains convincing, on top her other abilities. Davis needs no such validation - she has proven as much before and has that rare ability to let her face tell a story in a single shot.
 
But just like you'll remember the comedic set pieces over anything else, you'll warm to Octavia Butler just as easily - she's the architect of the central one, and it's too good to spoil.
 
Maybe it's dubious to smile most of the way through a film about searing social injustice (the realities of segregation and the figure of Martin Luther King remain mere asides), just as it is suspect to champion Skeeter as a necessary white mouthpiece lifting these women out of their plight.
 
But as an involving piece of historical fluff, The Help succeeds in grabbing you, and doesn't let you go until you're a wet blubbering mess.
 
All the more easy to do nowadays, now that we know all about the 1%, of which Ms Holbrook would have been a sterling example.