Yes I know, I have been away for a coupla days, believe me when I say I wish I had the time to be 100% available to meeting my blog aims, sadly life throws us the proverbial lemons and so we juggle as best we can.
In my mind The Help is a nearly perfect film. It's not a big budget blockbuster or special effects extravaganza, and while the idea that it is a female driven piece may be off putting for some, it is full of substance, pertinent and relevant while completely engaging and masterful in it's ability to balance the comedy and drama with which it is equally rich.
In a nutshell, the story, adapted from Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name, is set in Jackson Mississippi against the civil rights era of America. An aspiring young journalist by the name of Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) returns home to be with her ill mother but still full of dreams of making it as a writer in New York. She decides to collaborate with two of the maids of her friends (Viola Davis as Aibileen Clark and Octavia Spencer as Minny Jackson), to write a piece based from the perspective of the maids of the town. The three of them put it all on the line as they challenge the social norm of their segregated consciousness and community, to expose the truth of the maid's way of life as a secondary citizen, and in their own small way to take a stand and contribute to the wave of change that was prevalent at the time.
Now in case you don't know, I am a South African. I grew up in the final years of apartheid. I was a teenager when the New South Africa was born. I grew up with a maid (as she was called then), which in the South African context was usually a live-in domestic worker, her name is Nahsisi and she is still in my mother's employ. Nahsisi was like a second mother to my sister and I (taking care of us while my own mother was forced to work three sometimes four jobs to make ends meet), she is quite literally part of our family, her children are like our siblings. It's a special kind of bond, maid and employer, sometimes demonstrated and treated as strictly business, but if you are lucky enough it can be a life-changing relationship full of the contrasting dynamics of all familial relationships.
We watched many a movie with Nahsisi growing up, while she baby sat us, and one of the reasons I love and respect the power of movies so much, is that they opened our eyes and exposed us to a lot of different thoughts and ideas about humanity (because all though we grew up in such a powerful era, we were quite blessedly oblivious as children to what the state of life in South Africa actually was, thanks in a large part to my mother who never raised us to be racists at the start).
It was on TV that we learned that people were treated differently because of their shade, that courage could be sparked and spread from the smallest of sources. We learned about Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers from the television, and in many ways at that young age this association was an American creature (the South African truth dawning on us as the system around us crumbled on it's own weak foundations). The great truth learned at the end of the day is the universality of the need to disarm our boundaries and embrace the variety our world offers us in terms of race, culture, language, religion, etc. We were not indoctrinated into hate by our government and social surroundings, we were shaped into the people we are through those moments when we could sit together and share laughter and tears and stories with someone our country told us we should not deign to associate or empathise with. It's a tradition we have kept in our house, using movies as a thought generator with Nahsisi's children as they have grown up, sharing and enlightening them with such great pieces as Schindler's List, Beloved, Cry The Beloved Country. And I am grateful for this, that I have grown up learning from Nahsisi, having her as a friend and a member of our family.
But the harsh reality is not everyone has been blessed in the way I believe we have, some of the closest people I know still harbour some form of prejudice in their own little bubble.
The Help is great representation of the intrinsic truth that equality and validation is worth the battle. This is the movie that made Viola Davis a commodity, which made Emma Stone an actress in the strictest sense, that gave us the new Jessica Fletcher (yes, of Murder She Wrote) in the form of Octavia Spencer , in her deserving Best Supporting Actress Oscar winning performance. The movie is laugh out loud funny, and break my heart sad, and it is must see viewing for all members of the human race, speaking of the need to make voice to the concerns of your mind with the tools at your disposal.
I do loves me this slice of movie pie!
The Help is the first movie from the 84th Academy Awards watched and recommended for the purposes of this blog, alot of movies in the 2011 year of selection, and disgustingly a lot never watched prior. The Help is the 52nd Academy Award movie watched since blog commencement.
nuff said...
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