View full sizeEmma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis star in "The Help"By STEPHEN WHITTY
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
There is an African-American saying that, in the North, white people let you rise high just as long as you don’t get close; in the South, white people let you get close as long as you don’t rise high.
"The Help," set in early ‘60s Mississippi, shows just how close — and yet separate — side-by-side lives could be.
Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, it’s the story of Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a budding journalist in Jackson doing a study of all the black housekeepers who keep all those nice white ladies looking so cool and rested.
And what the housekeepers have to tell her becomes nothing less than a story of civil rights, and moral wrongs.
When it was published in 2009, Stockett’s novel drew some criticism for giving the white Skeeter such a prominent role — as if the story of her awakening to injustice were as important as the injustice itself. That focus only sharpens here; Hollywood still prefers using a member of the majority as the entry point into any minority’s story.
Skeeter is played by Emma Stone, though, who is genuinely engaging and, when necessary, enraged. With her quicksilver features she’s able to pass for both a pudding-faced highschooler at one point and a sophisticated Southern belle at another.
And it’s still the black actresses who own this — as they should — and help lift it above good-intentioned melodrama.
The extraordinary Viola Davis is breathtaking as Aibileen, who has tenderly raised thirty years’ worth of white children yet never had time for her own life. "Doubt" won her one Oscar nomination; this performance deserves another.
And Octavia Spencer — her huge, wide-set eyes always set in an expression of startled outrage — is a consistent delight as Minnie, the determinedly independent maid who inevitably stands up to her white bosses (but can’t seem to leave her abusive husband).
For audiences starved for strong female roles, this movie gives us plenty (including the always-welcome Sissy Spacek as a slightly dotty matron).
For audiences interested in the era, however, the movie provides some dubious details.
It’s unlikely, for example, that Minnie’s amazing act of rebellion would go unpunished in those Klan-ridden times. And the scenes of maids looking back longingly to the ‘30s — when white bosses knew how to act — feels more like the author fantasizing than the characters talking.
Blame that, perhaps on fledgling director and screenwriter Tate Taylor, who happens to be one of Stockett’s close friends. Better than a friend here would have been a fresh eye — perhaps someone like Kasi Lemmons, who might have had her own insights to add.
Because while "The Help" is wholly entertaining, you never get the sense it’s telling you the whole story.
What it does tell you, though, is still startling — and what it does show you, when we finally sit down in the kitchen with these tired but indomitable women, is still provocative, as it asks hard questions about class and color and childcare.
And if you don’t think those topics are still worth pondering, just look around any playground some morning.
THREE STARS:
Rated PG-13 for violence, language, alcohol abuse and one very scatological joke.