The Help 2011

     This film is based on a book by Kathryn Stockett and it was rejected 60 times before publication.  The setting is 1963 in Jacksonville Mississippi.  Everything and everyone in the town is divided between black and white.  The black women are maids in the houses of the white women and it's been this way for a long time.  There are published laws regarding the interaction and separation of the two races.  Eugenia is a part of this society but she is white and she sees things differently.  She wants to be a writer and she decides to interview a black woman.  She starts talking to Albileen about what it is really like to be a maid and they encourage the other maids to begin to tell their stories.  This single event turns the lives of her friends and this Mississippi town upside down!!
     This is very good, it's a story that most of us don't know anything about.  Black women raising white children but not raising their own children, not being able to use the same bathroom as their employer, cooking, cleaning doing everything and facing being fired for very little reason.  Times are changing but they may need for to be forced?  4 1/2* (I really liked this movie)
 
146 min, Drama directed by Tate Taylor with Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Ahna O'Reilly, Allison Janney, Anna Camp, Eleanor and Emma Henry, Chris Lowell, Sissy Spacek, Cicely Tyson, Mike Vogel.

Note:  Imdb 8.1 out of 10, 75% critic 91% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 3*, Rolling Stone 3 1/2* out of 4* Peter Travers, Plugged In 3* out of 5*, Amazon 4.7* out of 5* with 10,102 reviews.  Goodreads gives the book 4.5* out of 5* with 1,851,845 votes.
Special Note:  Filmed in Greenwood, Jackson and Clarksdale, Mississippi.  It's not mentioned in the book how Eugenia got the nickname "Skeeter."  The book says when she was born, her thin leggy appearance caused her older brother to remark that she looked like a "skeeter" (mosquito).  Director Tate Taylor and Kathryn Stockett were childhood friends in Jackson, Mississippi.  Stockett makes a brief appearance as one of the ladies sitting in Hilly Holbrooks meeting.  Civil Rights Activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson.  Real national news headlines of this event are used in the film.  There are seven Oscar winners in this film.  Davis, Stone, Spence, Sttenburgen, Janney, Spacek and Tyson an honorary winner.  Chastain was an Oscar nominee