The film begins with Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) giving a brief insight into the lives herself and her community who work, for the most part, as domestic staff for the white elite of Jackson, Mississippi. How she's spent most of her life raising white children and how she'd recently lost her own son. And Minnie, her friend, (played by Octavia Spencer) loses her job due to an inability to abide by unjust rules and hold her tongue as she's expected to.
Meanwhile, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (played by Emma Stone) has returned home from college with a degree and plans to use it. An idea that is lost on her friends and family who saw college as a means to an end in their quest for suitable husbands who could support them and their future children in the manner they've become accustomed to thanks to their upbringing. And while Skeeter(Stone) finds a job writing a column about cooking and other matters she has little to no expertise on and a valuable resource for the column in Aibileen (Davis), she soon finds her real passion in chronicling the life, times, and injustices of African American domestic servants in Jackson.
I've heard the criticisms leveled on this film and, in all honesty, they're not wrong. It's depiction of racism is, for the most part watered down or rose-colored. And the film's main antagonist is a twitchy social butterfly whose only real power is her standing. That might make sense if her near-senile mother weren't heckling her in the background during those important social events. It is funny, the characters that are the actual focus of the film are endearing and the conclusion is satisfying enough without being too far-fetched to be believable.
Meanwhile, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (played by Emma Stone) has returned home from college with a degree and plans to use it. An idea that is lost on her friends and family who saw college as a means to an end in their quest for suitable husbands who could support them and their future children in the manner they've become accustomed to thanks to their upbringing. And while Skeeter(Stone) finds a job writing a column about cooking and other matters she has little to no expertise on and a valuable resource for the column in Aibileen (Davis), she soon finds her real passion in chronicling the life, times, and injustices of African American domestic servants in Jackson.
I've heard the criticisms leveled on this film and, in all honesty, they're not wrong. It's depiction of racism is, for the most part watered down or rose-colored. And the film's main antagonist is a twitchy social butterfly whose only real power is her standing. That might make sense if her near-senile mother weren't heckling her in the background during those important social events. It is funny, the characters that are the actual focus of the film are endearing and the conclusion is satisfying enough without being too far-fetched to be believable.