I did not know the whole story of “The Help” going in, except for the fact that a white girl writes a book about African American maids based in the 1950’s pre-civil rights southern United States. It had looked humorous in previews.
I thought this movie would tell a story about how the black maids worked for socialite white women, raising their families and taking care of their homes. I expected some kind of conflict, but there was much more to this movie. The movie did an excellent job of recreating the 50’s South. The men were portrayed as being “above” the women and disassociated with their home life. The wives were portrayed as social climbing barracudas and the maids were long suffering. The movie went much more in depth than I had anticipated. They showed why the women behaved the way they did. They also built the maid characters, by showing you their own home lives and made you feel for them.
This movie was definitely a drama, not a comedy as I anticipated, although the comic relief dispersed throughout the movie was hysterical. Sissy Spacek played an unappreciated matriarch, who gave as good as she got. The problems the maids endured, such as not being allowed to use indoor restrooms, working long hours for little play and enduring repeated abuse from their employers, were well portrayed. You truly felt the maids were vindicated in spilling all the secrets of their employers.
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