The Help vs Mother And Child

The Help isn’t racist. I knew you were going to ask. It tells a vital story of our country’s all-too-recent past, with sensitivity and humor, in the voice of that period’s often silent minority. It’s thoughtfully directed, near-flawlessly acted, and sure to become a touchstone movie, to be discussed for years to come, primarily because it may or may not be a little racist. I mean, it’s not, obviously. Except it is. Or maybe it’s you? Maybe you’re the racist? Uncomfortable yet? Cool, let’s go.

In the 1960s, in Mississippi, black women and white women spent the most days together, even though segregation was in full effect. Of course, this was because many white women employed black housekeepers. These women were much more than maids; today we’d probably call them nannies, at least, although they were also cleaning, cooking, and suffering any number of insults and indignities at the hands of their bosses.

Aibileen (Viola Davis) is one of those maids. She’s raised several white children for the families that employed her, to support raising her own at home. She’s quiet, determined, and exhausted, and she carries a weight of sadness in her eyes and shoulders. Davis has played maids before, in Far From Heaven and Doubt, but Aibileen is unique among them. Davis plays her as someone careful to measure the volume of her voice, the extremity of her opinions, and the length of her stare. She reminds me a bit of the woman Meryl Streep played in The Bridges Of Madison County, and of Anthony Hopkins in Remains Of The Day. Too much emotion is unprofessional, and Aibileen is so consistently professional that she’s masking her emotions even when she doesn’t have to. She’s taking her work home, I guess. Viola Davis is one of Hollywood’s strongest actors, but even after constant critical praise, an Oscar nomination, and working with directors like Steven Soderbergh, The Help is her highest-profile leading role (and even some maybe-racist writers are calling it supporting). If Hollywood were a just place, Davis would have gotten the same amount of attention and paychecks after Far From Heaven that Kate Hudson got after Almost Famous. Why can’t Viola Davis play Bridget Jones? Or Erin Brockovich? Or Catwoman? I’m not going to speak for her and say she’s tired of playing white ladies’ maids, but I’m guessing once in a while, Viola Davis skims a script and thinks, “More quiet dignity? Bo-ring.”

But The Help, for better and worse, has more on its agenda than any kind of social statement. Aside from Aibileen’s central struggle, much of the movie plays for laughs, both of the knowing “Yes, our country isn’t perfect” head-shaking kind of laughter, to full-on farcical moments of physical comedy (The Help climaxes, no lie, around a poop joke.).  A bunch of white chicks play the bosses. Bryce Dallas Howard is the best, and bitchiest, of those. Listen, you think black maid is a cliché? Bitchy southern boss to a maid is a complete snooze too. None of them are bad, but they could have switched parts and the impact on The Help is the same. Another of their targets is Celia, a dumb-blonde trophy wife, played by Jessica Chastain. Celia is used mainly for comic relief, but she’s kind of like Aibileen, playing the role society expects of her, resentful of the rule-makers, but too tired to do much about it. She’s inept at housekeeping, and hires Minny (Octavia Spencer) to do covert cooking and cleaning. Their storyline was my favorite of the movie, and could sustain a movie of its own.

Because The Help is a movie (and a beloved book), there has to be a machine driving the plot, and in this case, we get Skeeter (Emma Stone.). Skeeter was once one of the society girls, and would have grown up to bully her maid as well, if she’d not gone off to college (She didn’t go far, but apparently it doesn’t take much). Skeeter is enlightened to the plight of the help, sees them as humans, and regards them in social situations (the other women are as oblivious to the help as they are a stove, or a toaster, or anything else that works in the kitchen). She befriends Aibileen, and soon decides she’ll collect her stories to pitch to her big city editor (Mary Steenburgen). She starts meeting with Aibileen and Minny, and eventually more maids, until she’s gotten the nitty-gritty about their jobs, their bosses, and their feelings.

This is the part that’s maybe a little racist. You know, how the maids can’t speak up until they have a white woman to be their spokesperson. The Help isn’t racist. It contains a story with lots of racists, for sure, and there will be some in the audience. Hollywood? Oh sure, Hollywood is racist as hell. Viola Davis is following this up by supporting Sandra Bullock. Viola Davis should BE Sandra Bullock by now. The Help means well, going a long way to portray race relations in the 1960s realistically. It doesn’t do the same for publishing, using it instead as a plot contrivance, the same way you might use gossip, or one of those magic movie radio shows that everyone listens to at the same time. Skeeter is given the go-ahead to work on the book, then the go-ahead to finish it, and then it’s stacked in storefronts and everyone is reading it, with instant word-of-mouth and cover-to-cover reading marathons, all in one montage.

The Help was directed by Tate Taylor. He gives a nice sense of the layout of the various communities; how long Aibileen’s walks and bus rides are, how far out in the country Celia lives, how fast gossip travels from bitch to bitch. But The Help could use an edit. Minny and Skeeter make big changes, off camera, while some of the wackier jokes and subplots get replayed. Taylor’s gift is in the choosing and directing of his fantastic female cast. Stone, Davis, Chastain and Spencer are all given room to develop their characters in subtle, interesting ways. Spencer and Chastain are brought in as comic relief, while Stone and Davis are the saintly lesson-teachers. Thankfully, throughout The Help, they find opportunities to defy our expectations of those roles.

Your next step after The Help could be something like Fried Green Tomatoes, which also deals with the more outwardly-racist past through a strong group of actresses (as well as a weird cooking-your-revenge subplot that also gets play in The Help). Instead, let’s bring it to the present day. Mother And Child’s cast is almost completely female, and it’s driven by a smart, complex screenplay and a director that works the coincidences and character connections to the movie’s advantage, rather than merely its conclusion. The subject matter is partly influenced by race, but not in a overt way. Race plays into who these people are, but it’s not their sole purpose. Also, Mother And Child is surprisingly sexy, something The Help cannot claim.

Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) is a cold, powerful attorney. She’s hard to pin down, but obviously intelligent, and highly sexual in a way usually reserved for sociopaths in movies. Elizabeth isn’t a murderer, isn’t a hooker, isn’t driven mad by her desires. She’s hot, she’s has her own money, she’s got a nice bed she likes to use. Good for her. Naomi Watts slips into Elizabeth’s skin in a fascinating way. Elizabeth knows the power she wields over other people, whether they want to work with her, be her friend, fuck her, she’s in charge. She has a semi-nude scene that made me gasp. We have the internet. We can see semi-nude anytime we want. A gasp is a big deal these days. Elizabeth begins carrying on a casual-then-more affair with Samuel L. Jackson, who loves his job.

Meanwhile, Karen (Annette Bening), an unhappy physical therapist, is doing everything in her power to not even be friends with Paco (Jimmy Smits), who wants to date her. Karen has been hurt too many times, and is busy taking care of her mother at home. Karen would love to find the child she gave up as a teenager. We get the idea, of course, that Karen’s job, relationships and unhappiness are all related to either guilt or an unfilled parenting instinct, but Bening adds the other possible layer of, like Elizabeth, maybe she’s more complicated than a movie character, and it’s our problem if we can’t figure her out.

Kerry Washington is the third lead, Lucy, a successful woman, the only married one in the cast, who wants to adopt a baby. She’s subject to pressure from her mother, who thinks an adopted baby isn’t real family, and from her husband, who sees the toll it’s taking on their relationship. Lucy is dealing with Ray (Shareeka Epps), who is young and pregnant, but whip smart and focused on getting the best family for her baby. Lucy and Ray have an interview scene that is the best written and acted of the movie. Two African American actresses, each playing smart, character-driven material, holding stakes in the film’s plot. The parts are only about being African American because that also happens to be the race of the actors in question. Mother And Child has elements of race relations to its plot, but the overall feeling I was left with was of a movie that was cast with race as a secondary thought. Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts could swap roles, and each would be left with a satisfying story arc, a great performance, and nothing to debate during dinner afterwards. The Help can’t say that.

You’ve guessed by now that the three women are, or will be, connected. You might have even guessed how. I did. It didn’t take any of the pleasure of Mother And Child away, because it arrives at this conclusion in a way that makes sense for the characters. The Help has Skeeter’s book propelling the drama forward. Mother And Child only has mothers and children, and great direction from Rodrigo Garcia.

Garcia is known mostly for directing HBO’s big-cast dramas, like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, and he brings a similar vibe to Mother And Child. Every storyline is given equal play, and we check back in on each at a comfortable pace. But Mother And Child doesn’t play as much like those shows (or like something on Lifetime, like its title implies), as it does like the movies by Garcia’s producer, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who directed Babel, 21 Grams and Biutiful. Mother And Child has a sweep to it that grants its characters with a universal importance, like they signify something bigger. Looking at individuals tells us something about everyone. Getting them to look at each other, as The Help could tell you, isn’t easy.

The Help: B

Mother And Child: A-