Movie - The Help (2011)

I've wanted to watch this movie for a while now.  I'm always interested in period pieces that bring an era to life.  While the movie explored the racial and political issues of the time, it was at a very superficial level.  The movie could have spent more time delving into the lives of the maids since those stories really brought home the power that the employers had over them.  My movie synopsis is as follows:

1. Young white southern girl, "Skeeter" Phelan (played by Emma Stone), is an aspiring writer.  She doesn't fit the normal southern belle mold and is stifled by the restrictions placed on women during the 1960's.  
2. Skeeter returns home after graduating college and settles for a job writing a housekeeping column for the local paper.  This is hardly her ideal position.  She's been rejected by all of the best publishing houses but she perseveres.  
3. The housekeeping column turns out to be a stretch since, of course, Skeeter's never done any housework.  She asks one of the local maids, Aibileen (played by Viola Davis in an exceptional performance) to help her with the weekly column.
4. As she spends time with Aibileen, Skeeter realizes there is an amazing story to be told.  These African-American maids are for all intents and purposes acting as mothers to the white children left in their care.  This is all the more bizarre since the maids'own children are being watched by others.
5. Skeeter gets the "go-ahead" from a publisher for the story but needs to convince maids to come forward and tell their stories. 
6. Even with the promise of anonymity, the risk to the maids is severe.  Repercussions are not just economic - the Ku Klux Klan is active, powerful and willing to make examples of anyone upsetting the separate but equal concept that is farcically in place to meet federal requirements.  But Skeeter needs to find women willing to take the risk to meet the publisher's demands.

The story continues with the effort of finding and gaining the trust of these maids.  And as they tell their stories, the viewer learns that a century after the Civil War, the south remains very much as it was in practice.  As mentioned earlier, I think more time could have been spent on "the Help" rather than Skeeter and her travails, but it was still an excellent movie.

Life lesson learned from the movie - treat the people who handle your food with the utmost respect!

I gave this movie three stars out of five.

More movie information can be found on IMDB and you can always buy the movie on Amazon!!!