The Help

Deb 8 Me 8

This one came recommended. I looked at the trailer and it looked to be a horrible movie, filled with giggly southerners and maids making cutesy commentary. Ignore the trailers. This was a pretty darn good movie that dealt with genuine issues in a realistic way. It takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the days of the civil rights movement. I can’t pretend to know anything about how deeply rooted the southern problem is/was, but the movie shows it with a pretty even hand. Like anyplace, some folks are kind but misguided, others mean and rueful.

Points against the movie are its slow pace, slow as a southern summer. And the main player just wasn’t believable, she didn’t look right to me and her motivations were never quite convincing. It’s a long movie at 137 minutes, the result of the slow pace and just a little too much ground covered.

But in its favor is that it’s a good story. It’s a big story that needs to be remembered all the time. It’s a movie that reminds me of our social shortcomings and wants to make things better. It opens the door for me to rant. The black slaves were freed in the 1860s and it takes a full 100 years for them to get legal equal rights. That was 50 years ago and still our most depressed communities, our worst schools and our jails are filled with black Americans. Sure there are great strides for a few blacks, but this works as a distraction to the thousands who still remain in squalor. This is a story of a few who courageously take the first tentative steps toward resolution of a powerful and deeply entrenched American crisis.