Just like her mother and grandmother before her, Aibileen (Viola Davis) has raised seventeen kids in her lifetime. All white babies from Jackson, Mississippi. Aiblileen gets paid $182 a month to do all the cooking, cleaing and grocery shopping for Elizabeth (Anha O’Reilly). But the worst of the society girls heads the Bridge Club committee and actually all the other committees. Her name is Hilly Hollbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and she was the first of the white babies to have a baby. In other words colored women raise the white children who end up becoming their bosses. Hilly thinks negro women should be seen and not heard let alone use the same toilet that.
Enter “Skeeter” (Emma Stone) white educated and can play a mean game of Bridge. But unlike her girlfriends with a marriage agenda of wealthy husband, Skeeter wants a career. And so she’s tickled to death to get a job at the local paper to cover the “Miss Myrna” column about house cleaning tips. But Skeeter’s about to get a bigger lesson than how to starch a shirt, when one of the maids, Minny (Octavia Spencer) is fired by her bosses, the wicked Hilly and her mother (Sissy Spacek).
And then there’s Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) a white outcast in her own right – a sort of Norma Jean – who adds to the color to the dynamic between mother and child, mother and maid, maid and child. This is a movie about empathy, black-empowerment and a study of what it may have been like to live in the Helps shoes. This is The Color Purple for this generation.
The movie runs a little on the long side, but that’s okay, because once the audience is immersed we beg to stay right in the swirl of the civil rights, the self-respect and a cry for becoming first-class citizens. Writer/director Tate Taylor pays close attention to the detail of the era whether in words “Crisco” for cooking or assuming “This whole civil rights thing will just blow over.” Be sure to bring a Kleenex as you’ll have teary moments and cheering ones. The Help will clean up at the box office and certainly garnish a Four tiaras payday.