The help, a moving tale of change

When I read about this quest, I immediately decided I wanted to write about the movie called 'The Help'. This is actually an adaptation of the book by Katheryn Stockett written in 2009. The movie was done two years after that in 2011. I first read the book as an ebook. By the time I finished it, I felt so emotionally moved. The cultured world I know about today is much different from what was pictured in the book that I felt sorry for the past. Initially I did not know that the book was adapted into a movie. One day by chance I happened to see a part of it on an English movie channel. I immediately rented the movie and watched it at home. 

The story is about the oppressed black maids working for the white families generation after generation during the period of the sixties. It is set in Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter, the heroine is an aspiring journalist with a degree from the University of Mississippi. Just like all white kids of her era, she too grows up with her black maid, Constantine. After her degree, Skeeter returns home to find her old maid gone. Upon inquiry she learns that Constantine was actually fired for wrong reasons. Skeeter is so disturbed by this news that she decides to see the world from the view point of a black maid. She wants their voices to be heard in the form of a book. She slowly convinces the other maids of different white households- the kind Aibileen, the temperamental Minny and several other maids who are hesitant at first and then decide that they want to be the change they want to see. Together they come up with a book narrating the experiences of the black maids working for a discriminating white family,chiefly against the social head of the white community, Hilly Holbrook whom Minny works for. But their efforts have their own side effects. Minny loses her job, Aibileen gets arrested after getting framed for a robbery and the rest of the maids face trouble in one form or the other. The film ends with the idea that this minor trouble is not the end of the blacks raising their voices against racial discrimination. 

The movie is realistic and is very well done. The cast selection is excellent and the characters fit into the imagination of the book. The movie was nominated for several awards and won the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It was a huge box office hit grossing more than two hundred million and brought a lot of recognition for its actors. The story is beautiful in a book. But bringing such stories to life through movies is a monumental task. The director Tate Taylor has successfully done this. I have watched the movie thrice and after the first time though I knew what was going to happen, the emotional heaviness was always the same. Nevertheless it is not entirely a sad drama. It has a lot of funny and lovable moments too. I especially liked Minny in the movie. Octavia Spencer who has played it is brilliant. If you like watching entertaining English dramas then this movie won't disappoint you.