The Help Movie Review

I enjoy watching movies of simpler times, and of romanticized decades of the early-to-mid-1900s. Occasionally I let myself daydream of living in such times. Then I see a movie like The Help (2011) which makes me realize that these “simpler times” were rife with their own sets of problems. These problems are often downplayed or even ignored in movies for the sake of depicting a sense of nostalgia.

During Civil Rights era Mississippi, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer. She gets a job writing a cleaning column for her home town’s newspaper, and seeks the advice from one of the local African-American maids. Between observing how the wealthy white families treat their hired help and being told that the nanny who basically raised Skeeter spontaneously moved to Chicago without notice, Skeeter sets out to write a book about the perspective of the black maids and nannies that are so obviously mistreated. She gains the trust of Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and later Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), a nanny and a maid respectively, and sets about anonymously writing their stories and opinions about working for white people. Skeeter’s perspective on things change and before the story is even sent to the publishers, the whole town has a thing or two to say as they become unwittingly, even unwillingly, caught up in the changing times. The town’s racist, snooty social ringleader Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) is bent on stopping the stories from becoming public knowledge for the sake of her own reputation and to keep the hired help where she believes their place is.

I’ve reviewed a couple of movies that are set in the 1960’s; Hairspray and X-Men: First Class both depict a fun and exciting vision of the 1960’s. Even Panic in Year Zero had an innocent, Leave It to Beaver sort of quality to it. On one hand, The Help reminds us of the civil rights movement as well as the gross inequality and injustice that were prevalent in the day. But on the other hand, The Help also seems to downplay the pain and widespread suffering of the day, similar to how Hairspray did. The Help is a story about pain, but it seems to avoid actually being painful. Really, we don’t typically go to the movies to see abrasive truths, we like feel-good movies. The Help certainly is a feel good movie with intermittent moments of uncomfortable reality. Still, it takes place in racially segregated Mississippi.

The feel-good quality of The Help doesn’t make it a bad movie, though. It’s well written, and very well acted! The characters were either generic or unique. Hilly isn’t very different from Hairspray’s Velma Von Tussle, and Skeeter is another single girl trying to make it big just like CoyoteUgly’s Violet Sanford. Where the movie really shines is in Aibileen and Minny’s characters. I can’t think of another character that is as downtrodden in quiet sorrow and still shows genuine love for the children under her care like Aibileen. I also can’t think of another character that is as amusingly vindictive and even vengeful towards her own oppressors while still trying to help and teach them the way Minny is. Both Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer stole the show in any scene they happened to be in. They were great!

I couldn’t help but get caught up in the story and become invested in the characters. It was well written and well acted. The sets and costumes were spot on. There was a brief scene in a grocery store. Even it looked like it was taken out of the 1960’s with all the products in 60’s style packaging and everything illuminated with a dull glow from the halogen fixtures above. There was lots of loving detail that went into The Help.

Even though it was a lengthy film at two hours and twenty six minutes, it’s still good. There are some shocking scenes, some funny scenes, touching scenes, and sad scenes. The movie isn’t going to appeal to everyone. You probably won’t enjoy it if you don’t like dramas in general. In spite of good intentions, I felt like some of the characters had subtle bits of racial stereotyping woven in from time to time. It’s subtle, so I didn’t find it terribly offensive. At any rate, I enjoyed The Help. It’s worth seeing if you don’t mind long drama films. It may even be worth buying a copy of should you find it to be entertaining enough. I might do that.

What's your favorite historical movie? Not necessarily a drama; X-Men: First Class was an action movie, after all. Comment below and tell me why!

Panic in Year Zero Movie Review

Several years back I was traveling with my family and we stopped at a hotel for the night. There, we caught part of an old black and white movie called Panic in Year Zero (1962). It was kind of funny to watch with its low production cost and very dated effects. I recently watched it again, and seeing it in its entirety was both amusing and sobering.

Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and his wife Ann (Jean Hagen) leave their Los Angeles home early in the morning with their teenage kids, Rick (Frankie Avalon) and Karen (Mary Mitchel) to make good time for their camping trip. After some time on the road, they hear an explosion and realize that Los Angeles has been leveled by a nuclear attack. Other major cities in the US and around the world have also been hit. With the authorities tied up in more pressing matters, looters and killers are everywhere. After stocking up on some necessities in a town they pass through, Harry takes his family out into the hills where they were originally planning to camp. There he sets about the business of surviving in a world where he knows the old ideals of humanity will be the first casualties. Taking every precaution to keep themselves hidden and protected, Harry hides his family in a cave, to wait for a time when civilization might again become civil.

Panic in Year Zero is like a time capsule of nuclear paranoia. Around the time this movie was made, The Cold War was escalating and the Cuban Missile Crisis had barely passed. Many people were expecting the world to come to an end at a moment’s notice. This movie really captivates this fear and reflected the attitude of its day; especially in the shot of the Baldwin family standing next to their car, staring at the mushroom cloud above their home on the horizon. From a historical perspective, this movie is fascinating to see.

Even though it could still happen, we don’t really fear a nuclear holocaust today. But if you look at Panic in Year Zero from a perspective of people caught up in a massive disaster, it still hits home. The massive panic, looting of supplies, people killing each other over necessities, and wide spread lawlessness on the grounds that there are no police to stop them brings to mind 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. People are taking extreme measures to protect themselves at all costs, while others degenerate into monsters without morals or conscience. We have seen people do this on the news in the face of massive disasters, natural or otherwise. The conflicts between people in Panic in Year Zero aren’t far-fetched from real human behavior that we have seen in recent years.

I’m probably making this movie sound a lot grittier than it actually is. While it certainly makes you think about surviving a massive disaster, it’s still a low-budget movie from the early 1960’s. It’s almost like a nuclear holocaust if it were depicted on an episode of Leave It to Beaver. There are strong gender roles that seem archaic these days; the men do all the fighting, hunting, and negotiating, while the women’s role is to have emotional break downs and scream at anything that doesn’t involve cooking dinner. Harry gets his family into the cave, and his wife immediately sets out to make a kitchen and dining area that is decorated and furnished. Ann and Karen spend days at the cave doing laundry in their high heels while Harry and Rick hunt. And of course the wise, unquestionable patriarch has to keep the women in line so they don’t do something stupid and jeopardize their survival. They also make a point of praying as a family like any good Christian Americans would.

Panic in Year Zero still had The Hays Code in effect; they were very limited in what they could show or say on screen. There are some teenage thugs (as most movies in the 50’s and 60’s had) who try to abduct Karen. It’s vaguely implied that they intended to rape her, but this is depicted by having them push her off balance a few times and kiss her on the lips against her will. Those monsters! It’s like The Andy Griffith Show trying to be Mad Max or something.

One of my favorite scenes is early on when the Baldwin’s stop for gas and the greedy gas station attendant tries to take advantage of the panicked demand for gas. He hikes up the price for his own benefit to an outrageous three dollars per gallon! That is unimaginably high for 1962, where the average price of a gallon of gas was $0.31. Harry ends up knocking out the station attendant in one old-west-style punch, and leaves a $10 bill with him before driving off. That scene really dates the movie, but man, I wish I could get gas that cheap.

Panic in Year Zero is a cheap B-movie, but it still hits home and touches on human behavior and panic in face of a crisis. It’s very successful in what it attempts to do, even on an obviously shoe string budget. I mean, they try to depict a traffic jam, but you never see more than 5 cars on the road at a time. There’s still a prevalent vibe of anxiety and panic throughout the movie, and it shows us things that could very likely happen. I recommend seeing this movie. It’s a pretty obscure title that I doubt you’d find at a local video rental store or RedBox. But NetFlix has it on DVD. If you can tolerate the low production value and dated social norms, this is a pretty good movie for what it is; a time capsule of nuclear paranoia.