Wide release 8-10-11
PG-13 (2:17)
Aug. 16, 2011 at ElCon with Sheila
2nd viewing January 14, 2012 at Crossroads with Dede
RT: 74% cag: 87%
DreamWorks Studios
Director: Tate Taylor
Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney
My favorite character: Minny, played brilliantly by Octavia Spencer. Emma Stone plays Skeeter, just returning home to Jackson, Mississippi in 1962/1963, with a degree from Ole Miss in journalism. She gets a job writing the cleaning help column in the Jackson newspaper. She knows nothing about her subject, so interviews a friend's reluctant black maid, Aibilene (Davis). The black maids of Jackson raise all the white children and are not even allowed to use the bathroom of the houses they clean and cook and raise the children in. The white women play bridge and belittle them. All except Skeeter, who decides to try to write a book from their perspective about their plight. It's not easy. All the women are scared to tell any of the white family's secrets, afraid of losing their jobs and afraid of retaliation.
Hilly is the viscious young white homemaker that harrassess the maids and demolishes Celia, the "white trash" bride of her former boyfriend, Johnny. Some of my favorite parts of the movie were the scenes with Celia and Minny, Hilly's former maid. Octavia Spencer (Minny) was just wonderful!
Throughout the movie I got outraged again and again at the inhumanity, the insensitivity, the absolute ridiculousness of racism. I just cannot imagine where it comes from and how some whites could (and can) possibly feel the way they do.
It was a period piece, and the set was wonderful. The cars (one Corvette, in particular, was breathtaking), the clothing and hairstyles, the home furnishings, Everyone I've spoken to that have read the book (and there have been many), simply loved it. Everyone encouraged me to read the book before seeing the movie, but I didn't have the opportunity. I still want to read the book. I wonder how different the book and movie are?
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