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| Author |
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 7:38 pm 
Yes - it's a movie and it's fiction - but if I had lived w/racism, it would just be another example of how the white world has more power.
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Teachmichigan
Member
07-22-2001
| Friday, August 26, 2011 - 7:59 pm
Another article about the big and small problems of The Help
CLICK HERE.
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Boberg
Member
10-04-2002
| Friday, September 02, 2011 - 10:32 am
Well, I’d like to testify that if you forget about what The Help looks like it adds up to “on paper,” and if you actually watch what’s up there on screen, what you’ll see is a movie that is tender, biting, honest, surprising, and far, far more curious and morally adventurous about race than many have given it credit for. The key to the film’s power, and its originality, is this: It’s a movie not about taking bold crusader’s stands — which, at this point, wouldn’t be a bold movie to make anyway — but about the low-key, day-to-day, highly ambivalent intimacy of black/white relationships in the Deep South. It’s about what really goes on in middle-class households between the lines of the most seemingly ordinary encounters.
More than that, what’s refreshing about The Help — and this, I think, is what the critics of it have gotten wrong — is that it doesn’t use white characters as a false entry point of identification for the audience. It is, rather, a sprawling ensemble piece that asks everyone in the audience — black and white, women and men — to identify with everyone on screen. That’s the way that Robert Altman’s films used to work. They were tough-minded spectacles of shifting empathy, and The Help, though it lacks Altman’s storytelling magic (it’s prose rather than poetry), isn’t so far removed in spirit from an Altman film. Every woman in it has her own way of looking at the world, and the movie wants you to understand how those viewpoints all jostle and mesh and collide.
Why does this movie centered on black experience have so many white characters? Because it’s one of the rare Hollywood movies that begins to capture the extraordinarily complex black/white synergy of the Deep South. There’s a fantastic contradiction at the film’s core: The chatty, upscale Betty Draper-gone-Dixie housewives treat their maids as lowly, often invisible employees, yet they rely on them as nannies, and the children the maids take care of regard them as surrogate mothers. So, in truth, they’re far from lowly. Yet if the reality of these relationships were readily acknowledged, it would be a blasphemy....more at link
http://preview.tinyurl.com/Review-The-Help
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Roxip
Member
01-29-2004
| Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - 10:33 am
I thought it was a great movie and so did my 14-year old (who was the one who wanted to see it - I didn't). I thought it was a period piece that showed a view of the way things were at the time...it could have been harder hitting but that wasn't the kind of movie it was meant to be. It made me think, it made my daughter and I have meaningful conversations about racism and classism, it made me think about situations in my childhood and wonder whether my mother was one of those women...and made me know that racism is still alive and well although somewhat less overt. I could share all of this with my daughter and know that she has been raised in a different time with a different viewpoint and hopefully will never allow this kind of situation to happen in her time.
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Ophiliasgrandma
Member
09-04-2001
| Sunday, December 11, 2011 - 10:55 am
I will be watching this later today.
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Sheilaree
Member
07-19-2002
| Monday, December 12, 2011 - 2:53 pm
great movie I think I but it.
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Ophiliasgrandma
Member
09-04-2001
| Saturday, December 17, 2011 - 11:50 am
It was pretty sobering, but I enjoyed the education...plus it was great seeing Cicely Tyson again.
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Tntitanfan
Member
08-03-2001
| Sunday, December 18, 2011 - 5:51 am
I loved the book so much I can't bring myself to see the movie!
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Sunday, December 18, 2011 - 11:58 am
Tnt, I read the book a while back and just recently rented the movie. IMHO, the book (as usual) is much richer in details and drawing in on our feelings. I did like the movie but as expected, it cut out parts of the book although it covered the jest of the book all the same. I hope that made sense. I'd recommend that you see the movie.
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Tntitanfan
Member
08-03-2001
| Monday, December 19, 2011 - 7:45 pm
Thanks, Eggie! I might just do that since you recommend it! I so hate when the movie loses the "juice" of the book -
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Colordeagua
Member
10-24-2003
| Saturday, December 24, 2011 - 11:52 pm
Happened to notice in the credits -- Nate Berkus was an executive producer. How'd that happen?
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Roxip
Member
01-29-2004
| Friday, January 06, 2012 - 1:10 pm
I wondered that too so I went and looked...he read the book before it was published and thought it should be made into a movie, and then when it was published he was contacted by some people from Jackson, MS who were friends of his that wanted to make this movie so he got involved. It is his first foray into the movie world.
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Colordeagua
Member
10-24-2003
| Sunday, January 08, 2012 - 8:38 am
Thanks, Roxip. 
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Rslover
Member
11-19-2002
| Saturday, January 14, 2012 - 7:34 pm
Critics' Choice Awards: 
Viola Davis - Best actress
Octavia Spencer - Best supporting actress
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Roxip
Member
01-29-2004
| Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 8:44 am
Both actresses looked beautiful at the Golden Globes.
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