"THE HELP"..946_D_03188..Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis, standing) attends to the needs of Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard, seated center) and her friends Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O'Reilly, left) and Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone, right) in DreamWorks Pictur, a photo by emrahozcan on Flickr.
In our faces are the rabidly racist women of Jackson, Ms. And on romantic display are the women who could not escape the abuse.
Meanwhile, the assassination of Medgar Evers is a hazy part of the Dreamworks movie The Help.
Though this movie is about a neglected and deeply disturbing part of the recent past (the role of women in racist torture), the rough edges are smoothed.
The Help presents a survey of suffering. The bad girls are appropriately bad. The girls who suffered are appropriately good. The guys are mostly inconsequential idiots.
It's a melodrama, but a recommendable one. The tone and pacing are professional. It presents a topic that we must continue to discuss.
In fact, I wish I'd been able to have an after-movie chat with my fellow movie goers.
Finally, there was one auburn error in the otherwise carefully-constructed world of Mississippi in 1962: Skeeter's hair should not have been romantically curly. Skeeter's hair should have had tight, wiry curls. She hated it as much as the African-Americans' hated their hair. It was not curly, it was frizzy.
No comments:
Post a Comment