Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri reviews 'The Help'

Film: The Help
Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard and others
Director: Tate Taylor
Rating: ****

The Help is based on a novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett. When a book is adapted into a movie, one is always apprehensive about whether it will match up. It seldom does, but hats off to Tate Taylor for doing a hell of a job. The screenplay has maintained the essence of the book and the casting is brilliant.

The Help is set in the America of the 1960s. It doesn’t directly deal with the African-American civil rights movement but takes a rather personal approach to expose the racism that was faced by African Americans during this period.

The film revolves around Eugenia Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), an aspiring journalist who decides to write a book from the point of view of the black maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi. She is joined in this endeavour by two maids, Aibileen Clark and Minnie Jackson.

The director makes a good effort to recreate the '60s but the fashion, the perfectly coiffed hair and the bright sunbathed sets are a little over the top. That out of the way, The Help has all the makings of an instant classic.

As far as acting is concerned, one cannot complain. Emma Stone does a great job as the tall and awkward Skeeter who doesn’t quite know how to fit into the petite little world of her married friends with their tea parties and social gatherings and Bryce Dallas Howard delivers a very convincing performance as Hilly Holbrook with her home health sanitation initiative and sugar coated meanness. But the ones who stand out are Viola Davis, who plays the character of Aibileen Clark to perfection and Octavia Spencer, who is phenomenal as Minnie Jackson with her sassy mouth and feisty attitude.

The movie has been written and shot in a way that really gets the audience involved with the characters. Aibileen Clark and little Mae Mobley repeating, “You is kind, you is smart, you is important,” together can make you blubber like a little baby, when Minnie Jackson is about to be beaten up by her husband you feel scared for her and you want to jump and yell “hell yeah!!!” when Aibileen finally bursts out at Hilly Holbrook.

Racism is the central and the most obvious theme in The Help but it also deals with feminism, domestic violence, etc. It is no coincidence that the major characters in the film are females. It attempts to show the audience the dynamics between the help and the women of the household as each one tries to find her own way to freedom.

All in all The Help is one movie you would be a fool to miss.