Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThere was a good deal of off-the-page drama surrounding The Help, Kathryn Stockett's best-selling opus about the lives of black maids and the white women for whom they toil: When it comes to art, who gets to illuminate the souls of black folks? Can a white woman truly tell the stories of black women -- using old-school Ebonics? Should it matter? And then there is the as-yet-unresolved lawsuit from Stockett's former black baby sitter, who insists that the novel was based on her life -- against her wishes. (Awkward.)
In many ways, the movie version of The Help, adapted for the screen and directed by Tate Taylor, is better than the 2009 novel. The film does much to humanize unsympathetic characters; a close-up of welling eyes, a frown or a backward glance provide visual cues that Stockett's ham-fisted prose cannot. On the page, Stockett's clumsy attempt at black dialect grates; on the screen, in the mouths of talented actors, it feels natural, unforced. Then again, the supremely gifted Viola Davis (Aibileen) and Octavia Spencer (Minny) can make any screenplay sing. (Witness Spencer's comedic cameo as the animal psychic in the god-awful Dinner With Schmucks.) CONTINUE....
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