The help is a drama movie based on a novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett. Movie attracted me because I read in newspaper this movie received four Academy Awards nominations. So curiousity made me watch this movie and it was worthwhile.
The movie is set in Jackson, Mississippi during Civil Rights era in early 1960s. The movies revolves around Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) and 2 maids, known as Helps, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis)and Minny Jackson(Octavia Spencer).
Skeeter has moved back home to her family's plantation after graduation from University of Mississippi. Back home she find that her childhood maid who raised her, Constantine, has quit job at her home. She is quite upset about this because she thinks Constantine would have written to her.
She finds job as a homemaker columnist with Jackson daily and for that she takes help of maid of her friend Elizabeth, Aibileen who is a middle aged lady who has been raising white children all her life from the age of 14. She knew she would be a maid because her mother was a maid, her grandma was a house slave. Skeeter feels uncomfortable the way her white friends treat their Helps, especially Hilly Holbrook Bryce Dallas Howard) a strong racist who has proposed a bill to provide separate bathrooms for black maid because they carry different diseases to white people.
Skeeter eventually tells her plan of writing a book from the Help's percpective to Aibileen to which she refuses telling it will cost them their life because of the law in Jackson. Later Aibileen changes her mind when she realizes that white children they raise are growing up just like their parents hating colored people. Her friend Minny, who is outspoken but with excellent culinary skills also join Aibileen. She was thrown out of job from Hilly Holbrook's because she used their bathroom during a tornado storm night. Hilly poisons all other families and Minny is left jobless and her daughter drops out of school to work as a maid.
Aibileen helps Minny find job with Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) who is married to a rich socialite Johnny Foote (Mike Vogel)who also is ex-boyfriend of Hilly Holbrooke. Celia being from a working class is not accepted by Hilly and group even though she is white.
Skeeter send stories of Aibileen and Minny to Miss Stain, an editor for Harper Row in New York, who thinks it as interesting but needed a dozen more. But no one was willing to come forward until Medgar Evers, an Civil Rights Movement activist was brutally murdered and following arrest of Hilly Holbrooks' new maid for pawning a ring because she was not given loan by Hilly for helping maid's children go to college. The Helps realize that this book will give them an opportunity for their voices to be heard. Minny shares a last story so that no one will reveal the book was about Jackson, Mississippi. She as a revenge for firing by Hilly, bakes a chocolate pie and presents it to Hilly. After she finished 2 slices,Minny informs her that her own shit was baked into the pie. Skeeter wanted to add her own story and confronted her mother who told Constatine was fired by her to save herself during a reception. But when later they went to bring her back home, they knew that she passed away heart broken as soon as she was thrown from Skeeter's home.
The book is published and became a huge success. Skeeter shares the royalty with each maid and Skeeter got job with a publishing company in New York. Her boyfriend but breaks up with her when he comes to know about the book. Hilly make Elizabeth fire Aibileen and Aibileen denounces Hilly as a godless woman and leaves the job to start a new life and Skeeter leaves to New York.
Excellent acting is done by Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly Holbrook, the extreme racist,we cant help hating her. Viola Davis as Aibileen, Octavia Spencer as Minny, Jessica Chastain as Celia Foote.
