Here’s the story: In a world unkind, and often downright cruel, to its black citizens, one heroic white person with an anachronistic sense of tolerance and gumption to spare stands up to her peers, denies her privilege and fights for equality. In the process, she learns about the “real world,” gritty and complex beyond her previous understanding, and those black citizens fortunate enough to be in her circle of influence gain the priceless gifts of self-confidence, hope and unlikely friendship. Everyone wins. Except the racists. They lose.
Does it seem like I just described about 50 movies? It should, because it is the same story about “the black experience” that white filmmakers have been making for white audiences ever since racism and prejudice fell out of vogue. “The Blind Side,” 2009’s breakout hit, is one example. This summer’s “The Help,” on its way to hit status, is another.
The world of “The Help” is ’60s-era Jackson, Miss. The downtrodden black citizens are maids, and the plucky white savior is Skeeter, a young wannabe journalist from a wealthy family. Skeeter decides to write a novel exposing the real lives and harsh truths of black maids working for white families in the South. At first, the maids are reluctant to share their stories, scared of the possible consequences and skeptical of such an outreach of kindness from a white person. But then… oh, I’m sure you can guess what happens.
For a movie that is so obviously well-meaning and earnest, it’s a shame that it just doesn’t work. In fact, criticizing it feels like telling someone who labored so carefully and lovingly over a batch of homemade peanut butter cookies just for you that you’re allergic to peanuts. But criticize I must. We don’t pull punches here at “A Love of Film.”
One major problem lies in the characterization — so flat and two-dimensional it’s almost caricature. The main “bad guy,” Hilly Holbrook, played — as well as she can given the material — by Bryce Dallas Howard, simply seethes racism and bitchiness with seemingly no motivation other than that the movie needed someone to seethe racism and bitchiness.
How did she get this way? How does she feel about the way she acts? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s as if before filming, each actor had been given a card emblazoned with either “racist” or “non-racist” and had only that upon which to base their character.
Fortunately, there is at least one exception: Celia Foote, played fantastically by Jessica Chastain (unrecognizable from her role in “The Tree of Life”). Celia is the effervescent “white-trash” outcast who wants desperately to be let back into the girls’ club. Her relationship with her maid, Minnie, is surprising and genuinely heartwarming and is, for me, the only thing keeping this movie (somewhat) afloat.
Some of the story arcs are overlong and repeatedly hammered in (too many scenes that all just say the same thing: white people are mean), and others are hastily thrown in there (a subplot involving a boyfriend for Skeeter that is maybe the most underdeveloped and sloppily thrown together relationship I’ve ever seen at the cinema). Add that to a completely unnecessary two-and-a-half hour running time, and the whole movie somehow feels both way overdone and also unfinished.
On top of everything, there is an undercurrent of questionable statements being made — that underprivileged blacks need a white savior to rescue them, that the worst offense done to black maids was rudeness (and not lynching or rape or abuse?), that a woman needs a man to be considered successful — that left me with a lingering and irked sense of uneasiness.
But apparently Oprah loved the movie, so what do I know?
2 out of 5 stars.
