Norman Jewison was the original director slated to take on Malcolm X, but a public outcry from the black community demanded that a black director take on a film regarding one of its biggest cultural heroes. Spike Lee eventually took the helm, stating that black stories should be told by black filmmakers. Indeed, whenever white directors take on stories of minority struggles, it feels as if touches of human experience seem to be somewhat lacking. There’s a certain authenticity that isn’t exactly there. White filmmakers can sympathize, empathize, and preach all they want, but at the end of the day, they’re still going home to a white world. There’s nothing wrong with a filmmaker stepping outside of his ethnic zone, but since there are many talented black filmmakers who would kill for a chance to tell their own stories with a Hollywood budget, why in God’s name would you not let them do so?
I propose these thoughts because they seem to represent the fundamental problem with The Help, a Hollywood-produced peak into racial struggles during the Jim Crow-period of the South. Here’s a movie centered on the hardships of black women thats been directed by a white man. Sure, Spielberg pulled off such a feat with The Color Purple as did Jonathan Demme with Beloved, but director Tate Taylor has only one other feature-length credit to his name (the comic dud Pretty Ugly People) and hardly seems experienced enough to pull of the tricky nuances this material demands. Taylor reportedly got the job because of his close friendship with the source novel’s author, Kathryn Stockett. It’s always great to help out your friends, but thats usually not the ideal way to have your writing translated to the screen. I love my friends, but if Hollywood ever comes knocking for my material, I’ll be begging for Crowe, Coppola, or Scorsese to helm.
The film takes place in 1960s Mississippi during racial segregation. Aibileen (Viola Davis) is a black housekeeper who looks after white families in the town of Jackson. Aibileen notices a pattern in her work: she raises her employers’ children with all the TLC she can give, yet they grow up to become ungrateful and obtuse adults like their parents anyways. Worse off than Aibileen is her best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer), who works for the cruel socialite, Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard). Hilly regards Minny as a soulless entity and heartlessly fires her over some racial nonsense.
Most of the white homeowners don’t regard their black staff as human beings with souls, a fact that catches the attention of Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), a young aspiring journalist from the town of Jackson. In spite of opposition from her white peers, Skeeter decides to write a book about the everyday trials of the black maids, exposing their racial hardships to the world. The maids would love to finally tell their story, but they’re afraid it may anger their white bosses to the point of termination or worse. Can the maids vent their anger and concerns without endangering their well-being?
All the materials for a powerful film are staring us dead in the face, but Taylor has no clue how to make them pop with any cinematic energy. To be fair, the screenplay does bring dimensions to the Maid characters and highlights their amorally corrupt dilemmas rather adequately, but the film has a curious lack of urgency in presenting this story. Taylor claims that he grew up in Mississippi and was “co-raised” by black housekeepers, but the film doesn’t burn with the passion of a man who has seen a lot and has an important story to tell. He treats it as a familiar period story that should play out to its natural course with little fuss, as if Brett Ratner were directing a Henrik Ibsen play. Even a made-for-TV version employing maudlin sloppiness would grab a better reaction from us. Perhaps Taylor is trying to avoid racial awkwardness by being subtle, but it just makes the film more of a bore as it slugs along.
Whats telling is how excellent actresses with ace performances to burn occupy the forefront, yet are left hanging by incompetent direction. At a time when actresses complain about a lack of intelligent roles, here’s a bundle of them delivered with fierce independence yet without significant shape. Emma Stone, the patron saint of down-to-earth beauties, has all the pluck, wit, and irrelevance to pull off Skeeter, but too little a point is made of her rebelliousness and resourcefulness. Bryce Dallas Howard, who’s carved a career out of playing fragile sweethearts, excels impressively as a racist meanie, but she is simply drummed up to be a White Devil. Jessica Christensen shows wonderful comic timing in a very clunky creation of a not-all-white-people-are-bad role. Viola Davis shows grace and dignity as Aibileen, but the film only hints at the wells of her resentment and perceptions. The best performance comes from Octavia Spencer as Minnie, allowing the smarts, humor, and resentment of her soul to come shining through in a graceful manner you wish the film understood more.
Whats frustrating about Taylor’s incompetence is the fact that there’s an over-qualified candidate out there who would’ve made The Help way more entertaining than it turned out to be. Her name is Kasi Lemmons, and not only would her experiences as a black woman better serve the material, but so would her affectionate eye for dramatic material and the lyrically superb ways she presents them. Her work on the wonderful Talk to Me serves as a prime example of all the energy and identification she could’ve brought to this adaptation. Talk to Me was also a period piece revolved around black identity that was hilarious, bold, irreverent, insightful, heartbreaking, and enormously touching. These are traits The Help’s screenplay cries out for and Lemmons surely would’ve turned it into a powerhouse dramedy.
Of course the cinema would be a very boring place if filmmakers stuck only to stories centered around their own races and ethnicities. Since empathizing with other people is what cinema is all about, it can be vastly interesting when people bring their point-of-views to other races, pointing out certain specifics we may never have brought attention to. I’m just mystified that there’s a shortage of working female and black filmmakers at a time when great female and black stories are getting their chance to be told (is anyone else bothered by the fact that the Sex and the City movies were directed by a man?). There appears to be a curious double standard at play in Hollywood. No one made a fuss when Taylor Hackford decided to make Ray, but, as Charles S. Dutton pointed out, “if Spike Lee wanted to direct the story of Jackie Onasis, the idea would never make it out of the office where it was proposed.”
At the outset, The Help proposes healthy ideas about racial tolerance and does, in fact, put the audience in another person’s shoes. It’s how it puts you in those shoes that I have a problem with. If you like seeing live-wire actresses strive for great performances, then perhaps you’ll find some interest here, but a more heartfelt and provoking film could’ve come from this material. The most pleasure I took from this film is knowing that it will probably fuel one of Spike Lee’s kick-ass rants in the future!
