DreamWorks SKG presents The Help – A Riveting Journey of Change
- Details
- Category: Film
- Published on Sunday, 05 February 2012 17:29
- Written by Janet Walker
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THE HELP, a deeply moving journey through 1960's Mississippi, from DreamWorks Pictures and Reliance Entertainment recently previewed for members of the media on the Walt Disney Studio Lot in Burbank, California.
Seasoned with humor, THE HELP is an accurate portrayal of a generational supremacy belief clashing with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. THE HELP is impacting, poignant and emotionally riveting.
Directed and written by Tate Taylor, THE HELP is based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett and is produced by Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan in association with Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi.
THE HELP stars Emma Stoneas Skeeter, Academy Award® nominated Viola Davis as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as Minny. Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney, Ahna O'Reilly, Aunjanue Ellis, Mary Steenburgen, Dana Ivey and Cicely Tyson round out the troupe of talented thespians.
THE HELP's all star cast, of first class ladies, are an ensemble with attitude. They play pretention, supremacy and ignorance without messing their perfect coiffures. When scandal arrives, via hardback, the ladies of THE HELP are enmeshed in a comical/concerning "tell all." The stories are deeply disturbing reflecting false humanity and the animalistic treatment of the Negro and any others who tried to assist in the furthering of equality and Civil Rights in early 1960's Mississippi.
THE HELP opens with Skeeter, a woman whose desires deviate from the well known and expected "profession of husband hunting" to the more modern feminist career of journalism. She is a writer, believing she could be a voice of change; she is a woman with a mission, deeply affected by global concerns and is sitting on a powder keg of transformation as she and the world would understand, soon enough, the difference between two realities.
The stories presented in THE HELP maybe fictionalized and yet are clearly true to life for the disenfranchised people who risked their lives to ensure their stories were heard. Voices, long silenced, cry out from their marshy and murky graves, those more egregious stories that will never be told.
This film, THE HELP, is for them. These are their stories. Our imaginations to life and the depth of depravity are not limited to single scenes, no matter how gripping and powerful, and we can and do understand what life was like for the Negro in Southern Mississippi during the rise of the Civil Rights movement.
The ladies of THE HELP rise above the emotionally distressing storylines to infuse memorable life moments creating a heartbreaking rite of passage, as a unit, a company, and individually, as each braids themselves with the other presenting the discovery of truth and courage.
The acting and direction in DreamWorks THE HELP is as close to perfection as the hairdos. It's a tear jerker. Be prepared to weep openly.
THE HELP presents a vivid portrait of the triumph of the human spirit and the power of one.
The ladies of DreamWorks THE HELP are the first real OSCAR contenders of the season!
THE HELP opens everywhere August 10, 2011.
