Southern Discomfort in 'The Help'

One of the most difficult things the world struggled to reconcile at the end of the Second World War was that the same Germany that had produced Bach and Goethe also spawned Hitler and Nazism.  So, too, have Americans (especially Northerners, of whom I am one) tried to wrap their psyche around a South whose same womb carried Mark Twain, Eudora Welty, and the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow.  Such contradictions defy reason and keep us up at night.  Or they should.

Contradiction lies deep in the heart of  Dixie - in this instance, Mississippi of the late 1950s and early 1960s - which is the setting of “The Help,” the new movie directed by Tate Taylor and based on Kathryn Stockett’s novel.  This is the universe of “separate but equal,” where the black domestics practically raise the children of the families they work for, yet are forbidden to use the household bathroom; where behind the genteel masks and manners of white society is the ferocious face of bigotry; and where the film’s young, white main character, Skeeter (Emma Stone), tries to live within this benighted realm but gradually realizes that its lies and subtle cruelties are too dense to make living truly possible.

Aibileen (played with calm dignity by Viola Davis) is a model domestic who works hard and faithfully for one family in Jackson; her life is measured out in cooking, cleaning, washing, and affirming the self-worth of four-year-old Mae.  Yet, at the end of Aibileen’s workday, when she can finally take off her straight hair wig and soak her weary body in the tub, there is no one, neither child nor partner, to affirm her worth.

Skeeter, when she has a free moment from trying to be the proper southern female for her ill mother Charlotte (Allison Janney) and her bouffant-haired friends (who include bigot suburbanite Hilly, played with nostril-flaring condescension), devotes her energies to becoming a writer.  Just graduated from the University of Mississippi, Skeeter returns home to learn that Constantine (a fragile-looking Cicely Tyson), her family’s longtime maid and the woman who really raised her, has disappeared.  What led up to that disappearance is one of the discoveries Skeeter will make and which she in turn will enable the characters around her to make as the story plays out.  In the meantime, she meets a boy (Chris Lowell), lands a writing job (of sorts), and attempts to maintain her balance between her ambitions and those her mother and friends believe she ought to have.

Out of her desire to express herself in a place where such desire in women (white or black) is considered patently unnatural, Skeeter decides to interview Aibileen, and eventually, Minny (Aibileen’s best friend, sassily portrayed by Octavia Spencer) and other maids about their experiences working for their white female employees.  “Did you always think you would be a maid?” Skeeter asks Aibileen, whose response comes almost without her thinking about it.  Yes:  her mother was a maid, and her grandmother had been a house slave.  What else could Aibileen have become?  But Aibileen’s fear - “I ain’t never had a white person in my house before,” she admits to Skeeter – slowly evaporates and she bares the soul she had kept from view.  And once Minny gets on board, carrying a far larger axe to grind than her friend, Skeeter and herinterviewees step out of the racial chalk circle, which produces life-changing consequences for them all.

This is a movie with a healthy number of characters, each with strong personalities and parts, and Mr. Taylor succeeds in bringing their respective threads together into coherent form, essential if one has not read the novel. (which I have not; there, I’ve fessed up.)  At nearly two hours, “The Help” is long and viewers will need to stay attentive in order to navigate through the film’s layers until its conclusion.  Standout performances are offered by Bryce Dallas Howard and Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain, gives a sweet performance as the housekeeping-inept and socially-snubbed Celia, who gets Minny as her maid and learns the many uses of Crisco.          

However, Ms. Davis is the graceful center of this story, despite her past and painful secrets and present indignities. She is the contrasting presence to the more volatile Minny, yet possessed of enough steel in her backbone to face down the likes of Hilly.

Since its opening, the film has, not surprisingly, engendered its share of controversy as regards its historical accuracy, and as to whether it honestly represents the complexities of the black maid/white employee relationship.  Despite the long list of American movies that have over the years dealt with race and/or race relations, the subject has rarely, if ever, been treated successfully or convincingly.  (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” both the novel and film version, is a notable exeception, however.)  Over-sentimental narratives, characters devoid of moral nuance, or stories overstuffed with gratuitous violence, have seriously compromised the quality and truth that should characterize such films.

Well-intentioned as it is, “The Help” also falls short in some ways conveying the full force of what it was like for an Aibileen or a Minny to work for a woman such as Hilly.  Granted, the absurdities (such as bathroom prohibitions) and violent actions (as in one harrowing encounter between another maid and the police) are included.  Even the “N-word” is thrown in for good measure.  But significant historical moments are cursorily referenced, by way of flickering black-and-white images on old TVs showing the news of Medgar Evers’ and President Kennedy’s assassinations.  They are included more to help us know the passage of time rather than to provide meaningful commentary about race relations or what the removal of these important figures meant to the civil rights movement.  Humorous scenes in “The Help” – which usually involve Minny – soften the rougher edges of this environment; but they also risk minimizing the very real dangers that threatened to overtake anyone who dared to challenge the rules.

Its imperfections notwithstanding, that “The Help” brings these women’s lives to our (so-called) “post-racial” attention at all is to be applauded.  For those who were not yet born or too young to remember the dramatic days of the civil rights movement, can gain some sense of that time from this film. It has stimulated thoughtful discussion about race and the experience of black domestics working for their white employees, one which was neither limited to the south nor to the past.  Having achieved that, “The Help” is definitely not useless.