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Aug. 14th, 2011 03:56 pmAs crap as the weather has been this summer, we've lucked out on weekends that have been mostly quite nice. Yesterday I decided it was time for my annual visit to the Halifax Public Gardens, 16 acres of wonderful in the middle of the city. The flowers were glorious and they were setting up for a dahlia festival later in the month. Some of the dahlias were blooming and they were really beautiful. It seemed like there were quite a few varieties, i hadn't realized that. Just seeing what was in bloom already, I'm marking the dates on my calendar (Aug. 30 - Sept 1) so i can go back and see all of them in bloom. It will be an explosion of colour, i tell you. I have more pics on Facebook here.
After that i went to the nearby Park Lane shopping mall where there's a multiplex cinema and saw The Help. I really liked it. It's pretty much a women's movie since it's all about women. It takes place in Jackson Mississippi in the early 60s and tells the story of how the black maids were treated by their employers, usually not that well. There is still a lot of racism around but thank God/dess it's not as bad as that anymore. ie. one women had a little cubicle built in the back outside as a toilet stall so the maid wouldnt' use the family toilets for fear the family catch something. You could tell that a few of the women weren't as bad but still bent to peer pressure when it came down to it.
One young woman, a peer of the other young wives, has returned to Jackson from university. Her friends have all married and started families. They have bridge club every week and they have Womens' league type groups. She doesn't really fit in anymore but still takes part. She wants to be a journalist or write a book and gets a job at the local newspaper writing a domestic cleaning column. She gets help from one of her friends' maids in answering the letters and decides she might write a book about the black maids from their point of view. This is basically illegal and at first none of the women are willing to be interviewed or if they do, they are very circumspect. One does agree to start with and little by little the rest do as well. The book, with names changed and written by "Anonymous" hits the bookstands and is a scandal.
I'm sure that life in the deep South under those circumstances was fairly accurately depicted and the characters are pretty well drawn out. Emma Stone is the new "flavour of the month" and she plays the writer, Eugenia aka Skeeter and she's really good. Her character is realizing that the way she was brought up is wrong. We're at the start of the civil rights movement and you know that Skeeter will be in the thick of it before long. I saw her recently in Easy A and she was really good in that too. I think she could go places. Viola Davis is the central maid character, Abilene, and the narrator. She's been in lots of things and I recognised her mainly from the Jesse Stone tv movies (Tom Selleck). Abilene is sympathetic, she loves the children she has to raise and tries to teach them to be strong and independent and give them a sense of self worth even when they have mothers that basically ignore them. She hopes to show the daughters that there is a different way but most of them still end up like their mothers, haughty and condescending and status conscious. She feels things deeply but seems resigned to her life though she dreams of more. Her best friend, Minnie, also a maid (Octavia Spencer) is more prickly and defensive, sassy and occaisionally prone to impulse. She's living with an abusive husband and a house full of children.
Most of the men in the movie have very small parts and focus. It's about the women, women who are head of the houses and women who keep the houses and homes together from behind the scenes and one woman that wants to change things. It's not overly sentimental like some of these movies can be but you also know it's all going to work out in the end.
There are a lot of movies that come out that are about women. Every once in awhile there is one that really stands out with a great ensemble cast, great characters and this one is one of those, for me at least.
After that i went to the nearby Park Lane shopping mall where there's a multiplex cinema and saw The Help. I really liked it. It's pretty much a women's movie since it's all about women. It takes place in Jackson Mississippi in the early 60s and tells the story of how the black maids were treated by their employers, usually not that well. There is still a lot of racism around but thank God/dess it's not as bad as that anymore. ie. one women had a little cubicle built in the back outside as a toilet stall so the maid wouldnt' use the family toilets for fear the family catch something. You could tell that a few of the women weren't as bad but still bent to peer pressure when it came down to it.
One young woman, a peer of the other young wives, has returned to Jackson from university. Her friends have all married and started families. They have bridge club every week and they have Womens' league type groups. She doesn't really fit in anymore but still takes part. She wants to be a journalist or write a book and gets a job at the local newspaper writing a domestic cleaning column. She gets help from one of her friends' maids in answering the letters and decides she might write a book about the black maids from their point of view. This is basically illegal and at first none of the women are willing to be interviewed or if they do, they are very circumspect. One does agree to start with and little by little the rest do as well. The book, with names changed and written by "Anonymous" hits the bookstands and is a scandal.
I'm sure that life in the deep South under those circumstances was fairly accurately depicted and the characters are pretty well drawn out. Emma Stone is the new "flavour of the month" and she plays the writer, Eugenia aka Skeeter and she's really good. Her character is realizing that the way she was brought up is wrong. We're at the start of the civil rights movement and you know that Skeeter will be in the thick of it before long. I saw her recently in Easy A and she was really good in that too. I think she could go places. Viola Davis is the central maid character, Abilene, and the narrator. She's been in lots of things and I recognised her mainly from the Jesse Stone tv movies (Tom Selleck). Abilene is sympathetic, she loves the children she has to raise and tries to teach them to be strong and independent and give them a sense of self worth even when they have mothers that basically ignore them. She hopes to show the daughters that there is a different way but most of them still end up like their mothers, haughty and condescending and status conscious. She feels things deeply but seems resigned to her life though she dreams of more. Her best friend, Minnie, also a maid (Octavia Spencer) is more prickly and defensive, sassy and occaisionally prone to impulse. She's living with an abusive husband and a house full of children.
Most of the men in the movie have very small parts and focus. It's about the women, women who are head of the houses and women who keep the houses and homes together from behind the scenes and one woman that wants to change things. It's not overly sentimental like some of these movies can be but you also know it's all going to work out in the end.
There are a lot of movies that come out that are about women. Every once in awhile there is one that really stands out with a great ensemble cast, great characters and this one is one of those, for me at least.
