A love letter to the black women who raised dual families during the 1960s: their own and the children of the white families they tended, Tate Taylor’s The Help is both joyous and humbling. With the same thematic tone and texture that distinguished Driving Miss Daisy, The Help paints memorable portraits of several black and white characters, and in its depiction of a specific time and place in southern history, watching it is like walking back through time to an era of sometimes noble and sometimes synthetic grace and charm and enlivened by the stories unfolding of a group of people who welded reins of power in families without ever abusing the privilege or receiving even a fraction of what they were worth.
The Help (Blu-ray Combo Pack)
Directed by Tate Taylor
Studio: Dreamworks/Touchstone
Year: 2011
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 146 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English; Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish, French
Subtitles: SDH, French, Spanish
Region: A-B-C
MSRP: $39.99
Release Date: December 6, 2011
Review Date: December 8, 2011
The Film
4/5
Fresh from receiving a college degree while her high school classmates chose to marry their hometown sweethearts and become homemakers, Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) wants more than anything to become a journalist, but all she can land in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, is a job writing the homemaker advice column for the local paper. Skeeter is something of a mini-iconoclast uninterested in the humdrum suburban married lives of her friends, and in seeking help from her friend’s maid Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), she gets a wonderful idea for a book: a collection of stories provided by the black maids, cooks, and housekeepers in Jackson relating tales of their decades of care-giving to the families who employed them. However, the interviews must be done in complete secrecy; one whiff of information about what they’re doing would lead to all of the ladies losing their jobs. Most threatening among the town’s young marrieds is Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) who uses her own powers of fear and intimidation to keep all of the town’s young set on a short leash. After being fired by the martinet Hilly, however, Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) can’t wait to tell her stories to Skeeter, and she enlists many of the other maids to do the same spurred on by the first glimmers of the racial protest movement in America.
Tate Taylor adapted his friend Kathryn Stockett’s book into the screenplay and has directed it with a sure if unshowy hand. Though he unnecessarily begins the movie with a scene of Skeeter’s first interview which gets repeated later on and he underplays the actual danger these black women faced telling their secrets for publication in the racially volatile South, the remainder of the film flows smoothly and, like such other southern fried dramedies as Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes, sucks in the viewer with these interesting, fascinating characters that one simply can’t get enough of (and like in those two films, the male characters are much less interesting and much more vaguely developed than the female ones). Even the town’s menacing villain Hilly is a fascinating creation, and the viewer waits in earnest for her to receive a justly deserved comeuppance. Whether eavesdropping on a women’s club bridge meeting or a Sunday church service, the ring of truth echoes throughout the film’s 146 minutes, and the evocation of the 1960s complete with the killing of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy and allusions to Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, the separate areas for “whites and coloreds,” and the blacks sitting at the back of the bus all make historical references to those events come alive once again, all serving as a haunting and sometimes unsettling period backdrop to the more immediate events occurring in the lives of these hard-working, under-appreciated women.
Performances are aces throughout the movie. Chief among them are the scene-stealing and memorable work of Octavia Spencer as Minny Jackson. Outspoken, sassy, but filled with a mixture of tough love and common sense, Spencer is the film’s most magnificent personage. Almost equally impressive is Emma Stone’s no-nonsense Skeeter, a black sheep who insists on establishing her own worth as an individual before worrying about reflecting her worth in the eyes of a boy friend or husband. Viola Davis is a warm, strong presence as Aibileen, quietly offering the motherly love and affection to her charges that their own mothers often neglect to give. Though written much too one-dimensionally as a selfish, despotic horror, the Hilly of Bryce Dallas Howard is certainly beautifully portrayed, and Ahna O'Reilly and Anna Camp play housewives who follow blindly and obediently at her heels. Jessica Chastain does very well by Celia Foote, the town’s misunderstood, mistreated “white trash” who marries into wealth. Two veteran actresses, Allison Janney and Sissy Spacek, capture southern matriarchs who have seeded social power to their children without completely losing their own personalities. Cicely Tyson has a couple of effective cameo moments as Skeeter’s beloved maid Constantine let go by her mother under mysterious circumstances, and Mary Steenburgen has her own effective moments as Skeeter’s book editor in New York.
Video Quality
4.5/5
The film’s theatrical 1.85:1 aspect ratio is faithfully delivered in a 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Color saturation levels are beautifully sustained throughout the presentation (except in a couple of flashbacks which feature some desaturation), and flesh tones are always natural and appealing. Sharpness is very good throughout with good black levels and shadow detail that’s just fine. The film has been divided into 16 chapters.
Audio Quality
4/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix concentrates the sound much more toward the fronts than in spreading its effects throughout all available channels. The rears are virtually silent through much of the movie, and even Thomas Newman’s music score and the church music get directed much more to the front soundstage than is necessary. Dialogue has been excellently recorded and has been placed in the center channel.
Special Features
2.5/5
All of the bonus supplements are presented in 1080p
“The Making of The Help from Friendship to Film” is a 23-minute summary of how the book got written and how the film got made featuring interviews with director Tate Taylor, original author Kathryn Stockett, producers Brunson Green and Chris Columbus, and actors Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, and Sissy Spacek.
“In Their Own Words” is a tribute to some actual maids in Mississippi and their daughters, hosted by director Tate Taylor and actress Octavia Spencer. It runs 11 ¾ minutes.
There are five deleted scenes which can be viewed individually or in one 9 ½-minute group. There are optional introductions for each scene provided by director Tate Taylor.
“The Living Proof” is a 5 ¼-minute music video of the song which plays over the closing credits and is performed by Mary J. Blige.
The disc offers promo trailers for Real Steel and War Horse.
The second disc in the package is the DVD version of the movie.
In Conclusion
4/5 (not an average)
A wonderfully effective and affecting period comedy-drama, The Help is one of the year’s most emotionally satisfying movies, and the Blu-ray release shows the film to its best advantage. Though the feature package is somewhat slight for a film that was such a huge hit at the box-office, the movie itself is marvelously transferred and comes highly recommended!
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
