The Help

And as the day approaches when the clocks will spring forward into Summer Time, here are my notes for our last screening before the AGM in June:

The Help

USA 2011                    146 minutes

Director:                      Tate Taylor

Starring:                        Allison Janney, Bryce Dallas Howard, Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Mike Vogel, Octavia Spencer, Sissy Spacek, Viola Davis

 Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer).
• Three Oscar Nominations including Best Picture, Best Actress (Viola Davis) and Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Chastain).
• Won BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer)
• Four BAFTA Nominations including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Viola Davis) and Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Chastain).
• Won Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
• A further 37 wins and 46 nominations.

“Let's clear those caveats out of the way first.  The Help is a broad southern melodrama that implicitly frames the push for racial equality as the tale of oppressed African-Americans who are given their voice by a lone white do-gooder.  Its moral universe is rendered in bright cartoonish strokes while its feisty journalist heroine is conveniently allowed to float free from the mores of a culture (specifically 1960s Mississippi) she has lived in all her life. Viewed as an airbrushed, Dettol-heavy fairytale, however, it's rousingly effective.”

Xan Brooks

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is a young white woman who returns to her home in 1960s Mississipp, during the Civil Rights era with aspirations of a career in journalism.  She befriends Abileen Clark (Viola Davis) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), two black maids and) and decides to write a controversial book from their point of view (their white employers refer to them merely as "the help"), exposing the racism they are faced with as they work for white families.

 The film is based on Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel which was rejected by 60 literary agents before publication when it then spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List.  Thee book has strong autobiographical echoes of Stockett’s own life as Stocket was brought up in Mississippi by a black housekeeper and she based the character of Minny on her friend Kathryn Stockett’s who subsequently won many awards, including an Oscar and a BAFTA for her portrayal.  

The film is directed by Tate Taylor from his own screenplay.  He was a school friend of Stockett and he optioned the film rights to her book before it was even published.  His first film as director was a low budget comedy called Pretty Ugly People; with The Help he managed to secure Oscar nominations for three of the actresses and a win for Octavia Spencer.

Here's the trailer:

One Day

Another month and another film... Here are my notes for this week's screening:

One Day

UK 2011                      108 minutes

Director:                      Lone Scherfig

Starring:                        Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Jodie Whittaker, Ken Stott, Patricia Clarkson, Rafe Spall, Romola Garai

 “In a season of movies dumb and dumber, One Day has style, freshness, and witty bantering dialogue. Anne Hathaway is so attractive that she would be advised to sometimes play against type (the eyeglasses she wears at the beginning are a bit over the top).  Jim Sturgess contributes the film's most versatile performance, one that depends on exact timing and control of the balance between pathos and buffoonery.  It's a decent night at the movies, if however a letdown after An Education, the previous film by Lone Scherfig.”

Roger Ebert

Upper class Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working class Emma (Anne Hathaway) graduate from the University of Edinburgh on 15^th July 1988; they spend the night together but decide to remain just as friends.  The story then follows their respective lives on the same date over the next twenty years. 

The film is based on the award-winning novel of the same name by David Nicholls.  He worked as an actor for a number of years before writing several number novels as well as a number of TV and film scripts.  His screenplays include adaptations of two his novels: Starter for 10 (2006) and One Day (2011). 

 In the book the unusual structure of following the protagonists on just one day over a twenty year period works well, although in the film it is possible to see this just as a gimmick.  However as author of both the original novel and the screenplay there must be a reason for its retention and in The Guardian film blog David Cox proposes an interesting theory:

“Emma and Dex throw away what should have been the prime of their lives. He wraps himself up in coke and self-love; she hides herself in her own cocoon of denial. The book's annual audit anatomised their folly in meticulous detail. Their wasted years were mercilessly ticked off and the course of their delusion was unerringly charted until they were subjected to deserved punishment.

This is the chronicle of wasted youth, rich in emotional nuance and period detail, that the book's snapshots encapsulated so tellingly. In the film's necessary haste, they reveal only blurry banality. Perhaps this key element of the book could have been conveyed through some means other than annual snapshots in a way that would have been more compatible with a two-hour film. Perhaps not.”

There was also criticism of Anne Hathaway’s Yorkshire accent, with one critic describing it as all over the shop (“Sometimes she's from Scotland, sometimes she's from New York, you just can't tell.”).  Anne Hathaway subsequently claimed that she watched Emmerdale to help her as she found the accent “a challenge”.

 Lone Scherfig started her career in Denmark, but she gained worldwide fame when she directed the internationally successful An Education in the UK.

Here's the trailer: