To recommend 'the help'

[whenwewereyoung12]

Watching the movie, 'the help' with Emma stone in it for the umpteenth time and just thinking what an underrated film it is.

The majority of my friends haven't seen it either so thought I'd recommend it on here.

It's about the treatment of black maids in the 1960s in America and is such a heartwarming, feel good, emotional film.

Would highly recommend to anyone that hasn't seen it. It's on Amazon prime.

Feel free to add your own recommendations, I need some!

I’m afraid I totally disagree 😬 the acting is brilliant (I love Viola Davis, such a sensitive and gentle performance) but the film has a real ‘white woman saviour’ thrust which I loathe. It really irks me that the focus of the story is on how Emma Stone’s character triumphs on the back of the stories of Black women who were persecuted by her contemporaries and from whose oppression she benefited so much.

I think it’s a well made and beautifully acted film - I just don’t like the message behind it.

I loved the book and enjoyed the film . I do get the whites women saviour comment. As soon as I read that elsewhere I did see where they were coming from.

just what we need, more white saviours

I too have watched the film a couple of times. It really brought home to me the indignities suffered by black women working for white families, and how traumatic and difficult it was for them to speak up about it. Such powerful performances.

I have seen it and thought it well worth a watch but it's not something I'd go out of my way to watch repeatedly.

Yeah the film makes me really emotional. It's absolutely unimaginable to think that people used to treat other human beings in that way that they couldn't even use the same toilets.

I didn't feel the white saviour as much, but could be because the book. Emma stones character had the success, but I thought it was in the telling of the stories that was liberating for women. She was just a conduit. I thought her mother was actually the worst of all the women, even worse than Bryce Dallas Howard.

I liked the book and the film
Another one in which the racism is absolutely cringe worthy is Small Great Things. And also the film Hidden figures

Oh thank you! I will give them both a watch

I don't think small great things has been made into a film it's a book but Jodi Picoult, the author who wrote My Sister's Keeper
Hidden figures is definitely a film though

I started reading the book but the name "May Mobley" annoyed me so much I had to stop.

I did like it but not the angle that the black women risk the sack or lynching for the white woman to get all the glory and safely fuck off to her liberal university. Agree that May Mobley is awful.

I liked the book.

Do you think it's worth reading the book after seeing the movie? I wasn't aware there was a book.

I think 'The Butler' is much better, although in the same kind of genre of film.

Definately read the book. Personally I think you get more from reading than you do from watching.
Another really good book is The Secret Life of Bees.

Viola Davis has said that she regrets making the film

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/viola-davis-the-help-regret

The book is better, I thought. Agree white saviour thrust is not great (to put it mildly) though.

As for eye opening books: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Book and film are totally white saviour. Felt a little uncomfortable reading it.

Hmmm - it's a very white, middle class and inoffensive introduction into black slavery IMO.

I honestly don't agree with that. Yes, their experience was told through a white woman (Emma Stone) writing it down but if it weren't for her then from what I seen there stories wouldn't have been told at all.

My main focus throughout the film was the black women, I was rooting for them from the start and feeling disgusted by the treatment they received at the hands of the white women.

Obviously Emma stone was one of the more likeable characters in the film but I didn't think the film was focused on her, rather the reality of what black people lived through in those days.

@Terracottasaur

I’m afraid I totally disagree 😬 the acting is brilliant (I love Viola Davis, such a sensitive and gentle performance) but the film has a real ‘white woman saviour’ thrust which I loathe. It really irks me that the focus of the story is on how Emma Stone’s character triumphs on the back of the stories of Black women who were persecuted by her contemporaries and from whose oppression she benefited so much.

I think it’s a well made and beautifully acted film - I just don’t like the message behind it.

This, absolutely. It’s about a white do-gooder who writes the book and gets the credit, and whose character gets most of the development. The maids are just colourfully oppressed material for her. Some excellent performances, but at least one of the black cast has admitted she regrets taking the role, and a black historians group has criticised it for over-simplifying and trivialising the lives of black domestic workers, and for keeping schtum about the frequent sexual harassment of black maids by male employers.

I loved the book and I think it showed much better than the film did, the risk these women took in telling the Emma Stone character their stories, even anonymously. The fear they were living with when the book came out, that the husbands of the women they had talked about would take their revenge on them. The cruelties these women inflicted every day on the black women who worked for them was awful and the film did not explore what had happened to the nanny when she got too old to work. Also, the main character didn't just take the glory and leave for uni - she ended up being outed and her life was made hell. As the black women told her in the book, he had nothing to stay for, she was finished as far as white people were concerned. I do get the white saviour criticism but it was also about a white woman opening her eyes to the reality of what the black women who raised white children were really going through. She went through most of her life loving her black nanny and having warm, fuzzy, totally unrealistic notions of what service had mean for her nanny. I agree with PP that The Secret Life of Bees tackles this issue better - so many white children were loved and raised by black women and this led to a very fucked up relationship between the two communities when the children started to see colour. The pain of the younger sister in The Secret Life of Bees is beautifully written.

Whatever you think of the book/film, I think we can all agree that Hilly deserved that pie!