What if simply telling the truth could get you fired, hurt or even killed? What if you went to work and your employer made you go out in a tornado just to use the alternative bathroom? What if you had to raise other people's children while someone else was raising yours? When would you ever feel free?
Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis, DOUBT) lives under these conditions in the early '60s in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the maid of Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O'Reilly, NANCY DREW), a housewife who does no house work. Like so many in her circle, she is more interested in impressing Mrs. Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard, SPIDER-MAN 3), a cruel bully who is pushing for an initiative to require homes with black help to have a separate bathroom for them. "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone, CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.) has been friends with these women since grade school, but instead of leaving high school and getting married like so many of them, she went to college to study journalism. Now she wants to write something important.
Her idea is to write about what it's like to be a black maid. Having worked with Aibileen on a housecleaning column, Skeeter first approaches her, but she doesn't want to have anything to do with it at first, but changes her mind. When Skeeter asks her why, she says God and Mrs. Hilly Holbrook. The racist socialite fired her best friend Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer, DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS) for simply using the toilet in the house and then spread the lie that she was a thief so she couldn't work anywhere else. The only job she could get is with Mrs. Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain, THE TREE OF LIFE), who has been shunned from society for marrying Hilly's ex.
In chronicling the story of the maids, we get to know Skeeter's story as well. When she came home from college her mother Charlotte (Allison Janney, TV's THE WEST WING) told her that the maid that raised her, Constantine Jefferson (Cicely Tyson, SOUNDER), had quit them, but as she finds out from the other maids that isn't the truth. Tyson is given a powerful speech in a flashback scene where she comforts Skeeter after she is spurned and one can see her saying the same words about herself.
Oscar nominee Davis deserves to be a two time Oscar nominee for sure. Her performance is filled with a range of emotions from fear to anger to kindness to unbelievable strength. She lost her son, but she cares for white children like they are her own. The irony of these young women popping out kid after kid and handing them over to black women to raise when the black women are looked upon as a disease is not lost here.
Two other Oscar worthy performances come from Spencer and Chastain whose relationship is touching. Spencer describes herself as a sass mouth. She doesn't trust white people and has every right to feel that way. So when Chastain's Mrs. Foote treats her as an equal she gets uneasy like she's being set up. Chastain, who is the discovery of the year having given an Oscar worthy performance in TREE OF LIFE, makes her character energetic and lovably naive. She tries so hard to be accepted by the other women in town, but having Hilly Holbrook as an enemy makes that impossible. Her reaction to Minny's story about how she sought revenge on Hilly is a mix between disgust and awe.
For a film to have four to seven Oscar worthy performances shows the level of talent in front of the camera for sure, but also behind. Director/writer Tate Taylor crafts great roles for these women from Kathryn Stockett's novel. The actor turned writer/director's only other feature directing credit is the indie PRETTY UGLY PEOPLE, but I think he'll have to put his acting career on hold, because his directing career is about to take off.
This moving drama balances a great deal without shorting any of the stories. Even a romance for Skeeter folds back into the main story. That story is that Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter risked a lot to tell the truth. When the book comes out it causes a stir and opens eyes for sure, but this film doesn't pretend that it makes everything fine between the races. The ending was a surprise because it mixes both a down note and hope. Hilly is the kind of woman who would cut off her nose to spite her face. But what the book did is change Aibileen and her race relations. Happy endings aren't what this film relies on; it finds something closer to the truth.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
