The Help
Three women decide to tell the truth in a town built around keeping certain voices quiet.
Director
Tate Taylor
Release
26 October 2011
Runtime
146 Minutes
Certificate
12A
Synopsis
Skeeter Phelan returns to Jackson, Mississippi after completing university. Unlike many of the women she grew up with, Skeeter isn't particularly interested in finding a husband right away. She wants to write. After securing a job at a local newspaper, she becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the attitudes of her childhood friends toward the Black domestic workers employed in their homes. Hilly Holbrook personifies those attitudes. Hilly campaigns for white households to provide separate bathrooms for their Black maids, presenting racial segregation as though it were simply sensible domestic policy. Skeeter begins looking at the women around her differently. She realises that the maids know almost everything about the families employing them. They raise their children. They witness their arguments. They see their hypocrisies. Yet nobody wants to hear their side of the story. Skeeter decides she wants to write a book based on their experiences. Finding women willing to speak is another matter. Talking openly about their white employers could cost them their jobs and expose them to consequences far more serious than unemployment. Eventually, Aibileen agrees. Then Minny joins her. More women gradually begin sharing their experiences. The project grows from Skeeter's idea into something belonging just as much to the women whose stories fill its pages. But keeping the book anonymous becomes increasingly difficult. The stories are too familiar. The people of Jackson may recognise themselves. And Hilly is exactly the kind of person who will want to know who dared expose the world she has worked so hard to preserve.
The Movie Trailer
The Help follows three women whose unlikely collaboration challenges the racial divisions of 1960s Mississippi.
Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan returns home to Jackson after university, determined to write.
But the world she returns to increasingly troubles her.
The Black women employed as maids by the town's white families cook their meals, clean their homes, and help raise their children while being subjected to discrimination and treated as fundamentally unequal.
Skeeter begins to wonder what those women would say if someone actually asked them about their lives.
Aibileen Clark is one of the first willing to answer.
She has spent years caring for white children while carrying the grief of losing her own son.
Her friend Minny Jackson has an equally powerful story—though her refusal to quietly accept humiliation repeatedly puts her employment at risk.
Together, Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny begin a secret writing project.
Giving those experiences a voice could change how people see their community.
It could also put all three women in serious danger.
AIBILEEN
Aibileen Has Spent Years Raising Other People's Children
Aibileen occupies an extraordinary position inside the homes where she works.
She's expected to care deeply for children who aren't her own, while living in a society that refuses to treat her as equal to the adults who employ her.
That contradiction sits at the heart of The Help.
Aibileen isn't an outsider to these families.
She's part of their everyday lives.
She sees the difference between what people claim to believe and how they behave when nobody important is watching.
When she finally agrees to tell her story, years of experiences that were expected to remain invisible suddenly have somewhere to go.
MINNY
Staying Quiet Has Never Been Minny's Greatest Talent
Minny understands the rules perfectly well.
Her problem is pretending those rules deserve respect.
She's outspoken, funny and unwilling to absorb every humiliation without responding.
That makes her vulnerable in a community where a white employer can damage a Black maid's ability to find work simply by spreading a story about her.
Minny's involvement in the book therefore isn't an abstract act of rebellion.
She has something very real to lose.
And when she decides one particular story needs to be included, she makes sure Hilly has a powerful reason to hope nobody ever discovers who the book is really about.
THE BOOK
Once Their Stories Are Printed, Jackson Can't Pretend Nobody Spoke
The project begins with Skeeter wanting to write.
It becomes something considerably bigger.
Each woman who contributes gives the book a perspective the society around them has largely ignored.
Their experiences aren't identical.
Some employers are cruel.
Others are complicated.
Some relationships contain genuine affection despite existing within a deeply unequal system.
That's what gives the project its power.
The women aren't producing a slogan.
They're recording their lives.
And once those stories exist on the page, the people around them have to confront the possibility that the anonymous households being described might look remarkably similar to their own.