The Help

This film was directed by Tate Taylor. I believe her idea was to create a connection with the audience and the characters in the movie. By doing so, Tate focused all of his attention on the southern society and showing how separate things were between blacks and whites. Most blacks were innocent but mistreated and most of the whites were vicious and rude.


 I liked how Tate didn't really cherry pick for the characters. There was multiple main characters with different stories that were told. Skeeter is played by Emma Stone and her performance was amazing. Her character, Skeeter, is returning from college with dreams of becoming a writer. To me, I can relate more to her because she never really cared what others thought. For instance, when her friend, Hilly, spoke her opinion on separate bathrooms for the help, Skeeter spoke up. It took a lot of courage to stand up to Hilly because none of the other females did. Even when she had an idea to write a book about black women who has spent their entire lives raising white families.


Viola Davis plays the role of Aibileen who is a black housekeeper of Skeeter's best friend. She's the first person to talk to Skeeter and help create the book. I looked at her character as a leader because she brought other helpers in to talk to Skeeter. It made a big change as far as creating the book. Many of the members had a lot to say about their experiences with white families.


Based off the film, it took place around the 1960's during the civil rights movement. Slavery was obviously over, but apparently blacks were still not equal. According to Hilly, blacks didn't even deserve to use the restroom in the same house. Her idea was to have them use it outside in 90 degree weather. So, those scenes were to portray the actual situations people had to go through.


Hollywood kind of created their own twist to the movie by having bad things happen to the villain. They basically wanted the villain to be tortured mentally. So, it was a good idea to have the housekeepers get their revenge by publishing the book and exposing Hilly. Even though, it probably never happened in the 60s.


Being as though I've seen this film a dozen times, it is always something surprising me. And if I was to rate it, I'd give it a 5 out of 5.