AT THE MOVIES: THE HELP

If you see only one movie in the next 12 months, please, let it be this movie, the stories of black, female, domestics around Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960's.

The story if driven by Skeeter, a young white lady and recent college graduate, returning home to Jackson, MS, single (never having even had a date - much to her mother's consternation), and ambitious - interviewing (successfully) for a job with the local newspaper. She ends up working for $8 / week, ghost writing a column on house cleaning. Knowing nothing about the topic (a boat she shares with all the white women of the Jackson), she asks Aibiliene, a third-generation housemaid, who at 53 years old has raised 17 children in her care. if she can help her with the house cleaning advice column.

Aibileen, along with her dearest maid friend Minny, eventually discover their voices and ultimately come to trust Skeeter enough to tell her of their stories, and of their feelings, exhibiting the courage to defy the conventions of the early 1960s.

The poignance, compassion, humanity of the domestics, as opposed to the lack of same exhibited by many (most assuredly not all) of the white women, both of Skeeter's generation (early 20-somethings) nad of her mother's generation, tells a beautiful story of how these maids raised their employers' children, always there for them, building them up, comforting when saddened, holding, loving, hugging them, things which their own mothers have not the time, the inclination, or the will to do.

An important story, brilliantly and lovingly told, as Skeeter comes to see how much like chattel the maids are treated, and decides she will write their stories (which she does do and her book is scandalously popular, as the good citizens of Jackson attempt to determine about whom each of the separate stories is written).

DO NOT MISS THIS MOVIE! (OR AT LEAST, READ THE BOOK!)