Review of The Help (2011) by Smijatov — 27 Feb 2012

"The Help" has all the right ingredients: a moving story, excellent acting, serious drama, but also charming humour. Indeed, it manages to succeed on many fronts. While it surely does not bring anything new or revolutionary to the film world, it is a definite feel-good film, despite its thematic.

This, however, is one of its main problems too. It manages to diminish the civil rights movement to the easy-breasy work of good-willed white people, while taking away all agency from the African Americans.

Yes, it is their story that is told, but it is only told due to the willingness and enlightenment of the white saviour woman, played by Stone. Yes, I agree with what many people have already pointed out, which is the emotional reality and believability that the actresses got to portray.

This is hard to take away from the performers, despite of the problems of the film. The excellent performances by Davis, Spencer, and Chastain were spellbinding. It was very nice to see so many good African American actresses do truly beautiful work and be recognised for it.

Technically, the film is very good, but the issues are in the actual story, but that is also the problem of the book. As I said before, the film does not offer anything new, anything daring, challenging, nothing we haven't seen before.

While potentially being the most charming film of the year (if one ignores the racial implications), it is definitely not the best one.