THE HELP (12A, 146 mins) Odeon Liverpool ONE
A gripping story, superb characterisation, beautifully directed and edited, this is a film that has the hallmarks of "Oscar Winner" written all over it.
Faithfully based on the 2009 novel by Kathryn Stockett, The Help, explores a tale of great courage displayed by ordinary, yet extraordinary, people against the backdrop of racial bigotry in 1960s USA, stirred by the burgeoning civil rights movement.
Thanks to superb acting and impressive photography this film, of nearly two-and-half hours never becomes mawkish or over-sentimental, but manages to hold the attention of the audience throughout. It all combines brilliantly to be one of great film experiences of the year.
Set in Jackson, Mississippi, it features masterful performances from Viola Davis (Aibilene)and Octavia Spencer (Minny) as two black house maids who revolt against a life of near slavery.
This materialises in their decision to share their life stories for a book to be written by Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone).
Directed and scripted by Tate Taylor, the film has relatively little violence yet it captures the menacing atmosphere of apartheid, under which the blacks lived in fear of their lives, their livelihoods dependent of the whim of bigoted whites.
Despite this hostile and false environment, the central theme is one of human kindness and love - including the love the black maids have for the procession of while children they raise, many of whom grow-up to return that love despicably by maltreating their own black servants.
The Help is narrated in the soft resilient voice of Aibileen Clark who sets the scene perfectly with her first utterance "Looking after white babies, that's what I do".
With only a couple of light-touch references to historical events - the deaths of Medgar Evers and President John F Kennedy - The Help cleverly keeps its narrative contained to the claustrophobic confines of Jackson and a handful of its homes.
The foundation of the film is Skeeter's quest for truth. The truth from the maids whose story she compiles into her book, and the truth about what happened to her own nanny.
The family's beloved maid Constantine (Cicely Tyson) has "quit" her job in mysterious circumstances, a dark secret concealed by Skeeter's mother, Charlotte (Allison Janney).
A comic - yet chillingly believable - storyline comes from Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) who wants to see a new law enacted to require black maids to have separate bathrooms in the homes of their employers.
The audience did not know whether to laugh or moan when Hilly hissed: "They carry different diseases to us!"
With the help of New York literary editor Elaine Stein (Mary Steenburgen) Skeeter embarks on creating a record of the astonishing treatment the maids' experience at the hands of the white folks they serve.
From the mouths of the maids, it is clear that the treatment meted-out to them had often been callous and cruel, but just occasionally kind, and it is partly this careful balance in the script that makes it so believable.
Much of the humour in the film centres around plucky Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), who renowned for her chocolate pies.
Minny loses her job as Hilly's maid and finds work instead with Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) who lives in a huge house thanks to her marriage.
Celia remains classed as "white trash" and her character offers some redemption for the whites in Mississipi, showing that they too could be downtrodden, though she helps Minny exact her revenge.
Ageing Sissy Spacek steals several scenes in a stunning performance as a southern matriarch who has a failing memory but a wicked sense of humour.
She too compounds the humiliation of her self-serving racist daughter and the scenes in which the awful truth unfolds, about Minnie's pie, are simply priceless.
Many of the audience leaving the cinema were already promising that this was a film they wanted to see again.
It really is well worth seeing and if it collects the bunch of Oscars it deserves, I suspect it will be back for a well-deserved cinema re-release early next year, but don't rely on that - catch it now if you can.
Click Rating 10/10
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