Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
Like it or not, The Help works in part because of white guilt. There’s not a good way around this. It’s the sort of movie that is designed to piss off white supremacists and to make liberal white people like it based specifically on the subject matter regardless of the quality of the movie itself. Well, as it happens, I am a liberal white person and in this case, the white guilt doesn’t work on me. That being the case, it’s a good thing that The Help is a damn fine movie in its own right.
This is a Civil Rights Era movie, and it takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, which means it’s not just going to be about the Civil Rights Era. Young Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) has just graduated from Ole Miss and returned home. She’s also secured herself a job at the local paper, taking over a weekly column concerning household hints. Skeeter’s goal is to write for a living, and she sees this as her foot in the door. While at her friend Elizabeth’s (Ahna O’Reilly) house, she asks if she might consult Elizabeth’s maid, Aibileen (Viola Davis).
