Filmbook: "The Help" (2011)

"The Help" is a movie full of expressions that speak louder than words and actors who are better than their material. Maybe because I expected it to be bad and potentially offensive, I found it mild and not offensive but with major tonal problems that caused me to feel very conflicted about what it was I had just seen.

I didn't like Kathryn Stockett's book and the movie essentially repeats the major mistake it makes -- except for one element the book can't replicate, which is really good acting. Emma Stone is really good as Skeeter Phelan, despite being trapped under one of the worst wigs I have ever seen. Octavia Spencer, new to me, as the  oft-defiant Minny was terrific. Bryce Dallas Howard as the reigning Southern belle of Skeeter's small town was... well, you hate her, but you're supposed to, so she's doing her job. Aunjanue Ellis (also new to me) makes a memorable Yula Mae. Allison Janney, who I didn't even realize was in this movie, is great in it in a minor role as Skeeter's mother. Mary Steenburgen is in this movie for about 2 minutes total, as a New York book editor who becomes Skeeter's long-distance mentor, and even in that 30 seconds where she is eating lunch in some swank place flanked by two dudes in suits who seem to both be her dates, she's acting her ass off. (Also, you go get it.)

And the best of them all is Oscar nominee Viola Davis* as Aibileen, who just takes up the entire screen. Viola Davis is in fact so good in this movie I began to fantasize about an alternate third-cinema version of it in which Emma Stone's character asks Davis' character for her assistance (...or her help? Thank you, I'll be here all week!) over and over again, with Davis' character perpetually refusing. The plot doesn't go forward, Skeeter doesn't find another solution to her "problem" of wanting to find an interviewee for her book; she just asks over and over, and Aibileen turns her down. Nowhere is she strongest in this movie as when she is putting debutante-with-a-conscience Skeeter Phelan in her place. Of course this is "silly" from a narrative standpoint because without Aibileen's participation, there essentially is no movie, except the one in my head called "Viola Davis Will Not Help," which will be up for the Academy Award for best movie ever made.

But I digress! Writer-director Tate Taylor (who also played the bondsman in "Winter's Bone") seems to have struggled with balancing the comedic and dramatic elements of the story, and the onscreen evidence suggests he ultimately decided that the best way was to wildly alternate between them. In a matter of minutes the audience is swung wildly from shit jokes (literal) to "We could be killed!!!" As I have been saying too often these days: That is a choice! A wildly ineffective choice for message delivery. But a choice!

This didn't occur to me at the time, but Taylor may have opted for this approach because a straight drama about segregation would be too depressing, too "hard to take" in one go. I don't think "The Help" exactly pats the audience on the head and says "Good job, now we're all better"--and at least it's less deadly earnest than the book and its insistence that the book-within-a-book Saves Lives--but neither of these are satisfying treatments.

Filmbook verdict: For that reason I would recommend you skip both the book and the movie. Not that either of them are the worst things going, but go read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and watch that movie instead. I will hand out spoilers to any and all.

*Roxane Gay wrote a great review of "The Help" for The Rumpus this week from a perspective I don't have, that of an African-American woman, and on her blog she continues the discussion saying, "It is unfair that an actress of Viola Davis’ beauty and caliber has such limited artistic choices... Jennifer Aniston played a maid once, in 'Friends With Money, but in every other movie she’s the hot love interest. Viola Davis never gets to be the hot love interest and yes she’s older now but when she was younger, she never had that chance either. Also, she’s only four years older than Aniston and she’s equally beautiful so why shouldn’t she play the wife in 'Bounty Hunter' or the dentist in 'Horrible Bosses'? Why couldn’t she have gotten the Julianne Moore role in 'Crazy. Stupid. Love.'? Those are terrible movies but it would be great for her have the opportunity to turn those scripts down. It would be great for all actors of color  to have the same opportunities as their white peers."

Filmbook: Where will you be for THE HELPocalpyse?

Reports are leaking of advance screenings of "The Help," the Emma Stone-/ Viola Davis-starring adaptation of the book everybody's book club read already. I wasn't invited to one of these, because life is pain, Highness, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something -- but I will probably go under my own steam. I like Emma Stone a lot, and I'm curious as I am with most adaptations.

If possible I will take my mom, who also didn't like the book (like me) and whose taste in movies apart from the garden-variety romantic comedy is somewhat unpredictable. (Loved "Knocked Up" but hated "Bridesmaids" -- for example.) She is neither excited for this, nor for the following week's marquee adaptation release "One Day" based on the David Nicholls book I also didn't like. (Now is the summer of our discontent!) I think at this point she's just waiting for "Grey's Anatomy" to come back. But in case you hear a loud cackling sound next week and plus a few hours, that's what's going on.

All the sneak preview reviews I've read have been glowingly positive, but that likely says less about the movie itself than who the studio is inviting, i.e. not spiteful little stubs like the management of this here blog. But is there truly anything Viola Davis can't ennoble? Well, almost.

Love For #fridayreads (If Not For THE HELP)

If you hang out on Twitter among bookishy folk, or are an SMDB*, you have probably either used #fridayreads or follow someone who has used the hashtag. #Fridayreads is a trend started by Bethanne Patrick (@thebookmaven) in which everyone is invited to tweet what book(s) she or he is reading on Fridays with the aforementioned label. #Fridayreads discussion combines three things I like, namely books, social media and nosiness. (Naturally everyone who participates in #fridayreads chooses to do so, which sort of negates the third, but I admit to searching the hashtag sometimes just to see what perfect strangers are reading.)

A few weeks ago I tweeted for #fridayreads, "I finally read The Help and...I still don't know what the fuss is about." Because I did I was able to connect with follower @shalahowell, who happened to be in the middle of reading it, and when she finished we had a chat as the last two women in North America to have read Kathryn Stockett's bestselling debut and forthcoming movie. (Although, ironically, we "discussed" it on Goodreads, finding Twitter's character limit to be a roadblock.) We ended up splitting on our overall opinion of the book, despite liking some of the same things about it, but it was more fun to digest

Here's my essential non-spoilery objection to THE HELP: The novel, which takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, is narrated by three characters, two African-American maids who work in white households (the titular "help") -- Aibileen and Minny -- and Skeeter, an interchangeably spunky college graduate who decides to write a book about "the help" instead of trying to get married as her parents want. Aibileen and Minny's cooperation is essential not only to Skeeter's book, but to her rising understanding that the society she has been raised in is racist all the way down, that the way "the help" is treated is wrong and that she (as a white woman in the segregated South) is guilty in both those respects. So, not only do they have to help Skeeter achieve her dream, they also have to teach her what is apparent to readers from the first page. Their reward is... ah... well... Skeeter is really grateful to them! And they are both happy, in the end, to have helped her.

This is a less egregious example of what Spike Lee used to call, in film, the "magical mystical Negro" archetype -- think Bagger Vance, or (thank you Wikipedia) Bubba in "Forrest Gump." The book's essential message was, "If you try to change the status quo, not only will you not get anywhere, the best you can hope for is for nothing to get worse." One could argue this outcome is reflected in other literature of the Segregation-era South such as the conclusion of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but Harper Lee didn't make me feel that way, even while that plot mechanism was underway. And yet even to the end, Skeeter isn't thinking about Aibileen and Minny and the risks they have run in helping her, but instead of why the "help" who raised her left one day and never came home, because she misses her. It's all about Skeeter, and despite the time Stockett invests in splitting the narrative, in the end it's still all about her.

Such self-absorption is a criticism I have heard lobbed at Twitter a lot, but that's the opposite of my experience there. I started using Twitter not because I needed another venue to broadcast my thoughts in (I already had this blog, for instance) but because some of my Internet-savvy friends were using it, and I wanted to know what they were saying. I'm not going to claim we're all hashing out how to save the world over there, but if I have a question about books, New Jersey, knitting or how long the line for Tina Fey at Barnes & Noble is, I know where to go. (I have asked and gotten answers to all of these queries. And by the way NJ, Cheesequake State Park is still silly.) You may get around to asking your friends anyway what they're reading, but initiatives like #fridayreads strengthen that sense of community in allowing a venue to say, "Hey! I read that" or "I'm about to read that, how is it?" in hopes that, as happened to me, a conversation opens.

*If you have to read this you aren't, but it's social media douchebag.

Filmbook Preview: Spring/Summer Adaptations Of Doom

They aren't all that doomful, it just looked nice to write, I think you'll agree. Note: I excluded all comic-book movies from this round-up, less as a judgment on their putative merits (after all, I haven't seen them) than because that would nearly double this list and for my purposes I'll consider them a different subgenre of adaptation.

• May 6: "Something Borrowed," Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, based on the Emily Griffin novel of the same name. I haven't caught up on the book itself but this is highly anticipated among my chick-lit-reading friends, so keep an eye on it. 
• Also May 6: "Everything Must Go," Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, based on the Raymond Carver short story "Why Don't You Dance." This one snuck up out of nowhere! (Costar: Christopher Jordan Wallace, son of Chris "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace.) 
• June 3: "Submarine," Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine, based on the Joe Dunthorne novel of the same name. This troubled/obsessed teenager flick may be a little too quirky/ "Harold and Maude"esque, but that approach has worked out well for a lot of directors.
• June 17: "Mr. Popper's Penguins," Jim Carrey, based on the Richard Atwater children's book of the same name. I expect nothing. 
• July 8: "One Day," Jim Sturgess, Rebecca Hall, based on the David Nicholls novel of the same name. If adaptations have a season this is more or less the tentpole. Unpopular opinion: I expect to like this movie more than the book. 
• July 15: "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2," Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson. Oops, did I say "One Day" was the tentpole? This is just a wee bit bigger. 
• Also July 15: "Winnie the Pooh," voice work of John Cleese, Craig Ferguson. Oh please don't screw this up.
• Also July 15 (whew): "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," based on the novel of the same name by Lisa See. Curious about this movie despite knowing nothing about the book (I believe it's a club favorite, which could go a lot of ways)
• August 12: "The Help," Emma Stone, Viola Davis, based on the Kathryn Stockett novel of the same name. I am the last person in the continental U.S. to read this book, I'm fairly certain. I wonder if Stockett's lawsuit by her family's former maid will be settled by then? HMMM.

Well now this is interesting: Kathryn Stockett, author of THE HELP, is being sued by the help a woman who works for her brother, who claims the author appropriated her name and likeness for the book:

The lawsuit, filed in Hinds County Circuit Court, contends that Kathryn Stockett was “asked not to use the name and likeness of Ablene” before the book was published, though it does not specify who asked. Ms. Cooper said that Ms. Stockett, for whose daughter she once baby-sat, had never talked to her about the book... Though the character of Aibileen is portrayed in a sympathetic, even saintly light, she endures the racial insults of the time, something that Ms. Cooper said she found “embarrassing.”

Times has more but with spoilers.

Scenes from a library queue II

Felt like I only did this a few weeks ago, but I was wrong:



NOTES
1. Perhaps this list reflects a little of the ambivalence I spotted in my lobby in April. Okay, that's not true, I know it does, but someone recommended the Vaynerchuk book to me and this beats buying it.
2. Summer of DFW in full effect! But speaking of, is it ludicrous that the library only has one copy of the David Lipsky book? 36 people are waiting for it right now (myself not included, though it looks like I'm going to have some slots free soon).
3. This is the third time I have checked THE HELP out from the library. Twice I received it, didn't have time to crack it and sent it straight back because someone else had a hold on it. Given my admitted desire to see what the fuss is about, I can only speculate that it's just ill-timed.
4. I realize given #3, I should probably not be requesting this many short-wait books at one time, but this habit dies hard. It hearkens back to my more transient years, when I would move into a place, gaze disapprovingly at the empty shelf, and form an ad hoc collection at the nearest library. (Unless I wasn't allowed to use it. I'm looking at you, college libraries of my mid-high-school summers.) And the DFW I can just renew until I'm finished.
5. On the other hand, I have been digesting books at an awesome rate recently, so let's hope that continues. Must be the weather.
6. It's worth noting that the Michael Lewis book has already been out for almost three months, and yet... Maybe 177 copies just wasn't enough? But I can wait.
7. I flipped through EVERYTHING AND MORE once and it seems pretty esoteric and technical. Not sure if I'll end up finishing it. We'll see.