The Help (2011) * * *

Directed by:  Tate Taylor

Starring:  Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Sissy Spacek, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, Mary Steenburgen

Based on the Kathryn Stockett novel, The Help gives us an involving portrait of early 1960's Mississippi, in which African Americans were practically treated like slaves still in everything but name only.    The Help works in a soap opera way, with big revelations, emotional moments with swelling music, and plot turns.    For most of the characters, things turn out okay, even though in the end the civil rights movement still had not fully taken hold and the black characters are still subjected to the whims of whites.

The Help of the title refers to the black maids who work for rich white families in Jackson, Mississippi.    They do the housework and practically raise the children, who sadly grow up to be like their parents.    Yet, they are not permitted to use the bathrooms in the house should nature call.    In one instance, Minny (Spencer) is fired by the nasty Hilly Holbrook (Howard) for using the "inside toilet", but is soon hired by the social outcast Celia Foote (Chastain) who hides Minny's existence from her husband and not for reasons you would anticipate.

The other maid whose story we follow is Aibileen Clark (Davis), who is dedicated, loyal, and hurting over the death of her son.    She sees the ugliness in Hilly, ("You are a godless woman") and despairs that the children she loves so much will one day turn into their mother.    Octavia Spencer won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her more comic role, while Davis was nominated for Best Actress in a compelling performance.    Spencer provides the movie with expert comic relief strictly on the heels of her advice to Celia and her inability to keep quiet when injustice is being done.

Aibileen's and Minny's stories are tied together by Skeeter Phelan (Stone), a recent college graduate who decides to write a book about the life of a maid in Jackson.    She uses Aibileen and Minny for background and stories and promises to keep their names out of the book, but soon it is impossible for the local townsfolk not to deduce who the book is about.    Especially when the story of a pie eaten by Hilly becomes a town scandal.

About this pie.   Minny makes it for Hilly as an ostensible peace offering shortly after her firing, but it is made from less than wholesome ingredients and let's keep it at that.    Frankly, this subplot is too gross to provide the laughs which it intends.    It is just too disgusting.   It made me cringe instead of laugh, but the movie gets a lot of mileage out of it.    Too much perhaps.   It appeals to the lowest common denominator and in an otherwise intelligent, thoughtful movie.

The Help, with the exception of Celia's understanding husband, has either absent, oppressive or racist male characters that appear in one scene and are pretty much disposable.    This is a movie from a refreshing female perspective.    It is about the stark differences between how white women and black women were treated in the South, with the white women too hung up on racial divides to understand that they too are oppressed in their own way.